If You Need Me
by ChristianGateFan
Summary: Shortly after Operation: Annihilate and Amok Time, Spock saves McCoy's life by bringing the wrath of aliens imprisoning them and Kirk on himself, instead. He is not as prepared for the consequences as he thought, and it is his friends who will have to be there to help him pick up the pieces in the aftermath. If he will let them. Thankfully, both Kirk and McCoy are stubborn.
1. Chapter 1

Here I go again working on way too much stuff at once, but uhm...I've kinda been watching a lot of TOS recently, and now I'm not gonna be able to get back to my other wip's unless I get this out. So here's the first part/chapter/ not really sure how long it's going to be. I kind hate my brain sometimes. It seriously would not let me do anything else tonight it was like no-must-write-Spock-hurt/comfort! So I hope ya'll enjoy this. :) And yes, it's very much original series (NOT new movie-verse, even thought it was good). It starts shortly after Amok Time, which was the episode after Operation: Annihilate. It refers heavily to both episode, but not to a whole lot else, I think, so as long as you've seen those you should be good.

If You Need Me

When Jim Kirk woke, he was not at all where he expected to be. In fact, he had not expected to be _waking_ at all. Last he remembered, he was on the transporter pad with Spock and Bones…

He should have been rematerializing on an uninhabited planet, just a routine survey mission. So what had gone wrong and _where the hell was he_?

This was not the clearing they were supposed to be put down in. It wasn't outside at all. It was a room. A metal box with no windows and only one sealed door.

"Captain, are you well?"

Jim glanced over his shoulder to find Spock on his feet and already examining the walls. Of course Spock would be the first to wake. Not that he knew what had knocked them all out in the first place.

"I'm fine…" Another glance about him told him Bones was still unconscious nearby, but he didn't seem injured. He did, however, have a pair of what looked like metal bracelets around his wrists. Jim moved quickly to his friend's side and picked up a wrist to look at one of them. It appeared to be a seamless ring. "What in the—"

"I examined them as well. They give no indication of their purpose or of how they were manufactured. The metal is also unfamiliar to me."

Spock was just looking away to the wall again when Jim looked up, but he could swear the Vulcan seemed concerned. He was worried himself that the metal rings might be meant to somehow harm McCoy, but Spock was…well, Spock.

Then again, things had not been easy for him lately—for any of them, but for Spock in particular. All within the last month or two the first officer of the Enterprise had suffered from an attack by one of the neural parasites on Deneva, been temporarily blinded in the process of killing the creature, and only short weeks later gone through what Kirk now knew to be called Pon Farr—losing his emotional control completely in what led, in the end, to a fight to what Spock believed briefly to be Kirk's death.

Any normal human, after that much physical and emotional pain in such quick succession, would not be functioning nearly as well as Spock was. Spock, as usual, seemed perfectly fine whether he was or not.

Jim let it go and turned back to McCoy to shake him. "Bones…Bones, wake up. Can you hear me?"

McCoy answered with a quiet groan of annoyance, and his eyes flickered open. "Jim?" He blinked in confusion at the dull metal ceiling above them, and then focused on Kirk again. "What in the Sam Hill…?" He started to sit up and Jim helped him out of instinct, but he seemed fine.

"We have no idea," Jim admitted, in regards to their situation.

"None? Why not, the computer broken?" McCoy said it with a nod towards Spock in his explorations, and the Vulcan momentarily looked back with a raised eyebrow.

"Perhaps I would have more answers, Doctor, but I must admit that I have not been conscious for much longer than the captain and yourself."

"Yeah, whatever," McCoy shrugged. He got to his feet and Jim followed suit. At the same moment they both realized that the doctor's medical kit was still hanging from his shoulder. They remembered then, to, to check for phasers and communicators, but those were all gone.

"Why would they leave the med kit if they were going to take everything else off us?" McCoy wondered aloud.

"Considering the unfamiliar metal and construction of these walls and of the rings around your wrists, as well as the unknown manner in which we arrived here, it is logical to assume that whoever or whatever has imprisoned us is of high intelligence. In that case, it would also be logical to assume that they or it would recognize that your medical supplies would likely cause no threat to its continued incarceration of us."

"Thanks for the explanation I didn't need, Spock."

"You are welcome."

Bones just glared, but it was nothing more than the usual banter and Kirk rolled his eyes good-naturedly and began to look for something to examine himself.

There were one or two panels that looked like they might come open. Spock was poking and prodding and prying at the one by the sealed door, and Jim was about to head for the one on the opposite wall when a voice echoed through the room around them. It came from everywhere and yet nowhere.

_**You have violated the sacred land of our Ancestors. No life form is to set foot on this land. It is to be preserved, and yet you used your transportation device to come here. What you have done must be punished.**_

Jim turned quickly in place, but he couldn't make out any more than he already thought. There was no way to tell where the voice came from. "What? We don't remember setting foot anywhere! The last we remember we were on our ship. How do we know you haven't taken us directly from there for some other reason?"

_**We have not. We would not have taken you if you had not come. We have no interest in strangers, but to punish those who violate this place. You were rendered unconscious the moment you were fully materialized, so that you could not see the place to which you had dared to come. None but the descendants of the Ancestors may see this place, and even they may not disturb it.**_

"We didn't know," McCoy said, speaking up. "If we had known we wouldn't have come."

Jim nodded, though he didn't know whether or not the owner of the voice could see him somehow. Still, he did it emphatically. There was already a weight in the pit of his stomach, and Bones was rubbing anxiously at the strange bracelets around his wrists. Jim couldn't blame him; he had a _bad_ feeling about this.

"Let us return to our ship and we'll leave," he added quickly. "And we'll tell everyone we know not to return here."

_**If the punishment is not carried out, then what real incentive will you have to do so? What reason will those you tell have to listen to you? No, our laws are set. You will be punished before you are released. THEN you will tell others not to return.**_

"We will! We will swear to it—"

Jim hadn't finished his sentence before McCoy shouted, and his knees went out from under him. "Bones!" He caught his friend under the arms, at first trying to help keep him on his feet. He quickly realized there was no point, because McCoy was still shouting, and he was all but dead weight now. "Bones!"

Spock was beside them in an instant, helping him to lower McCoy to the ground. The doctor was al but writhing in pain, and the bracelets were giving off a faint glow. Kirk reached for one, hoping it wasn't heat and that McCoy wasn't being burned, but he didn't feel any heat.

When he touched one of them, he _did _feel something else—white-hot pain, racing up one side of his body and down the other, as if every nerve were on fire. He jerked away instinctively, knocked almost physically backwards. He heard himself cry out, and when he oriented himself again he realized he was flat on his back.

And that McCoy was still screaming.

He didn't think he'd ever sat up that quickly, and adrenaline negated any dizziness as he launched himself forward again, reaching for his friend who was still on the ground. "Spock, what's it doing to him!"

The Vulcan was trying to keep McCoy still with one hand and read the doctor's medical tricorder with the other, and even with his alien strength he wasn't having much luck with either thanks to McCoy's thrashing.

"Captain, please, if you could hold him still—the tricorder cannot get an accurate reading—"

Jim didn't need to be asked twice. He wrestled Bones up into his arms and held him against his chest, and that seemed to help a little. Spock began to scan, and Jim took the opportunity to shout up at the ceiling.

"Stop this! What do you really want from us? It can't be this!" McCoy's head smashed back against his chest, catching him right in the sternum and nearly knocking the wind out of him, but he held on. A sound like a tortured sob tore from his friend's throat, and Jim grimaced and tried something else as the knot in his gut twisted.

"I am the captain of the ship in orbit! Everyone on it is subordinate to me; I am responsible for them and their actions. If you're going to punish someone, damnit, punish me!"

"Jim—"

It was barely audible, but it was McCoy's voice, and he did not sound like he was agreeing. Quite the opposite.

Kirk ignored him beyond keeping his hold, and soon enough McCoy had abandoned any attempt to speak and was back to shuddering and shouting.

"Punish _me_!"

He'd almost forgotten about Spock and the tricorder. The immediate concern was that someone or something was hurting one of his crew—a member of his crew who happened to be a very close friend—and he had to stop it. Never mind that it was his responsibility; it hurt like hell, too, just to be watching this.

It always hurt. It didn't have to be Bones or Spock or Scotty or anyone even that close for it to hurt. He was the captain. If anyone under his command was hurt, or killed, he felt it. He always felt it.

"Stop this madness! If you have to do this, do it to me!"

"No, Captain."

It was Spock, making himself known again.

"Why not?"

"It is still not clear precisely how the devices work, but they are attacking the doctor's nervous system directly. It is extremely dangerous, and could easily result in damage or death if not stopped."

"Then why the hell shouldn't we stop it!"

"I did not say it should not be stopped; I only said that it should not be stopped by you."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Jim snapped. McCoy's cries were grating on him. This had to stop now or _he _was going to lose it. Spock was about the only one of them who was safe.

Spock, however, didn't answer him directly. Instead he stood up, and began to speak—presumably to whomever the voice belonged.

"This is not logical," he said, calmly but loudly—to be heard over McCoy's shouting. "From what you say, this is meant as a punishment—not as an execution. However, if you do not cease your attack on Doctor McCoy, he will die—perhaps within minutes.

Jim's stomach dropped out entirely at that. Spock hadn't been that specific a few seconds ago, and now that he had been Jim felt his arms tightening around his friend. _Oh god. Bones. _

It took a moment, but the voice answered.

_**The devices of punishment are set at their lowest capacity. If it is killing the one you call McCoy, then his is a weak species indeed. That is not our concern. If he dies, so be it. You and the one called the captain will still live to tell others not to return here.**_

"That is also illogical. Would not the spreading of such knowledge be better served by three than by two? Would it not be better for those who need to be told to hear it from someone who has felt the punishment? If the one whom you punish dies, then your cause is severely diminished."

If it wasn't Spock Jim would wonder how he could be so calm when McCoy's life was hanging in the balance. But it _was_ Spock, and at this moment he was grateful for it.

He was also hoping that Spock's plan was to logic them out of this completely, and that this wasn't going where he thought it was going.

It took longer for the voice the return this time, and the only sounds were McCoy's. Those sounds were becoming slowly less deafening, and Jim didn't know if that were a good thing or a very bad thing.

"Spock—"

The voice interrupted him.

_**This reasoning is sound. What are you suggesting?**_

Kirk was already looking up at Spock, and he was sure now that he saw the Vulcan's hands, clasped behind his back, clench tighter. It looked like every inch of him was stiff where he stood. Apprehensive. As apprehensive as a Vulcan could look, anyway.

"My physiology is much different from those two with me. It is much stronger. I am suggesting that if it is imperative that you carry out this punishment, that you do so to me."

Bones reacted to that, just as he had when Kirk tried to pull that stunt. Perhaps even more violently, really. He surged forward with an alarmed sound, but he didn't get far before he cried out again and fell back against Jim's chest once more. He was drenched in sweat by now, and he looked like hell.

"Spock, there has to be another way—" Jim began.

Spock didn't quite glance back at him. "There is not, Captain." His arms were at his side now, though he still looked…well, he looked like he was bracing himself.

_No, no, this isn't right—_

That was when McCoy went limp in his arms, and Kirk realized that the bracelets had simply disappeared. Bones was free. He wasn't in pain anymore.

He promptly tipped over out of Jim's arms to vomit.

Jim caught his shoulders to keep him from falling in it, and pulled him back when he was through. By then Kirk was half on his feet—enough to drag his friend back a distance and then lower him back to the ground easily.

"Bones, are you all right?"

McCoy was still moaning quietly, but he nodded anyway. "The hell," he managed after a moment. "What did that damn Vulcan do?"

Spock. God.

Kirk looked back quickly, and the question was answered by a heavy thud. It was Spock, hitting the ground. The bracelets had appeared on _his _wrists, and while the only audible sound the Vulcan made was a startled gasp, the rings were definitely glowing, as they had been when McCoy was in pain only a moment before.

Jim didn't leave McCoy's side just yet, but called out in concern. "Spock…?"

"I…am all right…"

Well that was a lie, and Bones could see it too. The doctor had shoved himself up on his elbows, and he quickly covered the horrified look on his face with a scowl. "Damnit, Spock, what the hell is wrong with you!"

"It was logical…doctor. Your human…physiology…could not withstand what was…being done to you, and…it would be inconvenient to lose the…ship's chief medical officer…this far from a starbase." Spock tried to push up off his knees, but he only ended up closer to the floor as he slipped off them instead and a cry of pain escaped him.

"Spock!" McCoy wasn't moving very fast right now, but when Jim called out the doctor nodded quickly at him to get moving; he was fine, it was Spock that needed the help now.

When he got up to cross to his first officer, strangely enough he noticed that the puddle of vomit from Bones was gone now.

It was almost funny. All of this cruelty, and yet apparently their captors cared about keeping a clean house.

It was wrong was what it was.

"Spock?"

Jim lowered himself to his knees beside his friend, reaching to rest a hand on his shoulder, and the Vulcan reluctantly looked at him. "I am quite all right, Captain. Or…I will be in a moment. I merely need time in which to gain control of the pain. It should not…be long. I will be all right, just as I was during the investigation at Deneva. I could control the pain then, and I can now. That is also why this was logical…I can rise above the pain. You or Dr. McCoy could not."

"Maybe, Spock, but even two months ago you admitted yourself that you didn't think you could keep that up forever, and from the way Bones was—" He stopped and swallowed, not wanting to say it. "And I felt it, just for a second, and it has to be at least as bad as—"

"It is," Spock admitted, "as much or more than the pain inflicted upon me and the other victims of Deneva by the neural parasite. However…remember that this is not…meant to go on indefinitely. It will be a set amount of time, albeit the fact that we do not know the length of that time. However…it is still only a certain amount of time, and it will be over." As he spoke the heavy breaks for breath were becoming fewer and farther between. He _was_ gaining control.

But for how long?

"Spock…"

He wasn't sure whether Spock shifting so that Jim's hand fell from his arm was intentional or not.

"Jim. I will be all right. If…you will leave me to meditate—" Spock cut off in a choked sound. It was one very much like the ones Jim had heard from him in sickbay after the parasite attacked him on Deneva, before he had complete control. It was an uncomfortable flashback, and Jim realized that just because Spock wasn't rolling around screaming didn't mean this was going to be any easier than watching Bones suffer. It hadn't been easy to know Spock was hurting then, and it wouldn't be any better now.

He also realized that he was distracting his friend, and that Spock really would be better if Jim stopped talking and left him as he asked.

"Okay, Spock…but we're here. Listen to me, Bones and I are here, and we'll find a way out of this."

Spock nodded. "I will be able to assist shortly, I—ah…as soon as I have gained full control…I will assist."

"You don't have to—"

"I will, Captain."

Jim didn't argue any further because he knew it would be useless. "Fine."

It wasn't necessary, but Spock repeated that he would be fine then. Jim wondered if it was really more to assure his commanding officer, or himself, and as he was standing to go back to Bones he saw something in Spock's eyes that made him wonder if it was even really true.

He tried to ignore the stone in his chest, but he didn't stop himself from squeezing his first officer's shoulder briefly before he was entirely on his feet and moving away.

He tried, too, to ignore the quiet sounds and gasps behind him as he went back to McCoy. He tried to leave Spock his dignity in that way, but it was difficult. He wanted to turn around and go back and he wanted to make it stop.

Bones was having just as much luck as he in that regard. He was pretending to study the medical tricorder that he had picked up from where it had been abandoned, but he didn't look well and he kept glancing at Spock.

"Bones?"

Jim settled on the barren metal floor again beside his chief medical officer and touched his knee, asking without asking if he was okay.

McCoy swallowed and handed over the tricorder. His hands and arms were still trembling, almost imperceptibly but there, after effects. He was pale, but that wasn't all that was making him look ill.

"Jim, he really did save my life," he all but whispered. "He said I had minutes or more, maybe, but I think _that_ was exaggerating."

Jim scanned the saved readings on the tricorder, and there was a lot of it he didn't understand but he got enough out of it to know what McCoy meant. He didn't say anything. He only swallowed and set the instrument down on the floor.

"Bones, maybe you should lie back down."

Maybe worrying about Bones would keep his mind off of Spock so much while they tried to figure out what the hell to do.

"I am not lying down, Jim. I'm going to stand up, and we're going to figure out how to get out of here and how to get those damn bracelets off Spock and contact the ship and _leave_."

"Bones—"

"No matter how stubborn and annoying he is, we cannot just let him suffer, Jim. Not when there may be something we can do this time. I'm a doctor!"

"I know that, Bones! I know all if it!"

Their voices were raised now, but raised from a whisper. Part of them knew that Spock with his Vulcan hearing probably knew every word they were saying anyway—then again, maybe not right now, while he was trying to meditate and maintain control—but it didn't matter. It was human nature to pretend, anyhow, and maybe it gave them the illusion of a modicum of control. So they whispered.

"All right then." McCoy started to get up, but he was still too unsteady and he didn't even need Kirk's help to end up on his haunches again. "Or I'll…join you in a minute." He waved Jim off in frustration, not at Kirk, but in general. "Go on now."

"I'm going. I'll find something. Just rest."

"'M not resting for long if I have anything to say about it," McCoy growled, and when Jim looked at him more closely now he realized that his friend's eyes were not entirely dry. He was still stealing quite a few glances in Spock's direction, too. When he spoke again, he was even quieter than before.

"Jim, after everything he's already been thr—damnit." He swallowed. "I know he's a Vulcan. Right now I don't care, because I know that doesn't mean as much as he likes to think it does." Spock's happy grin when he realized Jim was still alive after the death match on Vulcan was still at the forefront of both their minds. So were the memories of seeing Spock in pain at Deneva and being unable to do anything. "We have to stop this."

Jim knew what he meant. Spock felt. Maybe it wasn't quite the same as for the rest of them, but he did. If anyone knew it, they dis. He was nodding before McCoy finished, and his jaw was clenching now. "I know."


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks to those who reviewed! :) Yes, everyone please do let me know if this isn't just awful so I know whether to keep going, lol. :P

Chapter 2

Within fifteen minutes Spock was on his feet and helping to examine the panel by the door. He was up before McCoy was, in fact, and Jim wished he would have taken longer but there was nothing to be done about it. Vulcans would be Vulcans. At least he seemed all right. Only the faint glow of the bracelets and occasional tick of Spock's head told them that anything was happening to him at all.

When Bones got back up he took the tricorder to the other panel, and Jim kept a careful eye on _both_ of his friends.

"I believe I had nearly discovered the release mechanism…" Spock was saying. However, either he hadn't, or his compromised condition was preventing him from correctly remembering what he may or may not have observed before their captors made themselves known.

It took nearly another two hours just to get a panel open. In the end of it they got the tricorder back from McCoy, and once Spock had tinkered with it he found a frequency that disturbed the panel's inner workings long enough that it popped open. Spock did not look pleased that it had taken so long. He didn't say anything, but the near-scowl on his face said it for him.

Jim didn't say anything either—merely let a hand brush the Vulcan's shoulder before he nodded to the open circuitry. They still had work to do, and Spock would understand what he meant.

It wasn't his fault. He was doing the best he could.

Spock nodded in return, but before he could reach into the wires he staggered back a step with a strangled cry.

"Spock?"

He wouldn't so much as put a hand to his head. He wouldn't show even that much weakness; not that it would have been, but he would have seen it that way. He froze in place instead, blinking rapidly and forcing himself to regain control.

Jim was startled, worried—his heart was in his throat. Over the past two hours he'd gotten too used to being able to pretend that his first officer was just fine. He'd forced himself to ignore the sudden small shakes of Spock's head that were all he would allow himself. Somehow he'd managed to ignore the fact that they'd become more frequent and more violent in the last several minutes.

Bones was on his toes, too, only a step behind Spock and with a hand half outstretched as if he could do something.

He couldn't, of course, and Jim knew that as a doctor he hated that. The look on McCoy's face said it now all over again.

A harsh breath or two, and then his breathing evened out again and Spock took the step back to the wall and began to work with the panel's insides. He never said a word, not even to assure them that he was fine. Maybe he knew that was pointless by now, or maybe it was just easier not to expend the effort.

Jim slowly backed away and hauled McCoy off to the side. "What have you got on you? Is there really nothing you can do for him? No sedatives, anything?"

"Nothing that would help him, no. Nothing strong enough. Not with the current amount of negative stimulation. The one or two mild sedatives and tranquilizers I've got wouldn't even _begin_ to cut through it. And painkillers would be useless; it isn't that type of pain."

"So no."

"No. They only chance we've got is to get out of here."

"What about the tricorder? Spock was able to use it to get that panel open; maybe we could disrupt whatever frequency is making those bracelets work."

Bones shrugged. "That would be a job for you or Spock, Jim. I'm a doctor, not technician."

Jim let out a breath of frustration, but he took the tricorder anyway. As long as Spock was still functioning he was the better equipped to work on the door, and Kirk figured he might as well let him alone to do it and see if he could do something else useful. The tricorder was only a medical one and wasn't likely to help—they were extremely lucky that it had been able to put out anything capable of disrupting that panel, and whatever was controlling the bracelets was likely much more sophisticated than a hidden panel catch—but it was worth a try.

He settled against the wall near Spock, fiddling with the tricorder settings, trying to isolate any transmissions coming into the room. There didn't seem to be anything, but there had to be. Maybe it was more advanced a way of communication between machines than the Federation could conceive of yet, but it had to _be_ there. If he could find it and isolate it maybe he could jam it.

Damn, but he wished they still had their communicators, phasers…anything. Anything to have more to work with.

Two more hours. Or was it three? The tricorder had a chronometer, but he wasn't paying attention to it. Certainly not now, when he was frustrated with the instrument for not doing exactly what he wanted it to do. Granted, Spock didn't seem to be losing any ground as far as control was concerned, but he wasn't gaining any either.

A scuffing sound from several feet away, a sudden heavy breath, and Jim jumped to his feet quickly and looked to find Spock leaning into the wall by the open panel. The metal rings had stopped glowing.

Jim let himself hope. "Spock, are you all right?"

The Vulcan straightened slowly, frowning down at the now-dark bracelets around his wrists. "The pain has ceased…for the moment." He looked up at Kirk, but quickly let his gaze slip away to a neutral location. Jim could see why; there was certainly something there, on his face, just under the surface, but without him looking anyone in the eyes it wasn't quite obvious. "However, seeing as they have not released us, it seems unlikely that is the end of it."

Jim was sure Bones saw it too, but he was covering well by putting himself in Doctor mode. While Kirk was still, he took the tricorder from him and removed the small cylindrical medical scanner to see to Spock.

"Doctor, that is unnecessary."

"I can't make sure those blasted things aren't leaving any permanent damage? Let me do my job, you green-blooded hobgoblin." McCoy snapped.

"If you must," the Vulcan deadpanned. "However, I must continue my attempt to open this door."

"Do whatever you want; I'm not stopping you."

And he didn't. Spock turned back to the panel and McCoy scanned on. He didn't look happy, but then again neither was Jim, and at least the doctor didn't look any more alarmed once the scans were completed.

"Bones?"

"He's fine for now, as far as I can tell."

"Good to know."

"As I attempted to communicate, doctor," Spock commented without looking at them.

"Like I said: you do your job, and let me do mine."

After that all was quiet for a while. Jim stood by Spock, assisting him with the re-wiring in any way he requested.

"It's been hours. Surely they'll be looking for us now that we haven't checked in," Bones said eventually.

"Of course, but will they know where to look?" Jim shrugged. "We could be on the other side of the planet from our beam-in site, as far as we know. For that matter, we might not even be _on_ the planet."

"Thanks for the optimism."

"I'm just trying to be realistic…getting out of here may be up to us."

Again, Spock didn't even look at them, but he did offer his two cents. "May I point out that the alien or aliens _have_ expressed the intention to release us themselves."

"Yes, but if this…whatever it is they think they have to do is going to continue I'd rather be out of here sooner rather than later. You can't say you don't feel the same, Spock."

"'Feel' is an inappropriate term, as you well know, Captain, however…" This time the Vulcan did glance back at him, just for a moment. "It _would_ be preferable."

Jim nodded slowly, knowingly. "Of course."

He didn't exchange a concerned glance with Bones until Spock was focused again on his work. It was the shared look that distracted them just long enough that they nearly weren't ready when it happened. Before any of them knew anything had changed the bracelets were glowing again, brighter this time, and Spock cried out and dropped in a fashion reminiscent of McCoy's own collapse only hours ago.

Spock wasn't ready this time. None of them were.

It took both of them to catch him, and to pull him far enough from the wall to lower him to the ground. By the time they did that, though, he was already fighting them—already trying to get back to his feet.

"No. I am all right. I—ah!" He cut off in a gasp and collapsed back into them. The gasps continued, but it was clear he was still trying to control it all. "I…am a Vulcan. I control…my mind_. I_ control—"

Kirk swallowed. "Spock, it's all right! Unless that's really going to help—"

"It will. I am a Vulcan. I can control the pain. It does not control me. There is no pain. I control my mind…" Watching his face go through contortions even as he tried to keep it straight was not Jim's idea of a good time.

McCoy cut in, ranting rather than showing his worry. "Maybe you control your mind, Spock, but there's a physical center of synapses in that Vulcan brain of yours that controls pain and other sensations just like in any other species. A _physical_ center, you pointy-eared bastard. You know what that means? You're not responsible for controlling it. It's not an insult to you or your blasted heritage or anything else if you can't."

The only response was a short garbled cry that Spock cut off as quickly as he could, and by now McCoy had shifted Spock's weight to Jim and pulled out the tricorder's scanner again. The way he paled didn't make Jim feel any better.

"Jim, these readings are worse—the level of pain is worse than anything I read from him at Deneva, and certainly worse than anything he was going through a couple of hours ago before it stopped."

"What?"

"It's like—like they knew he could control it. Like they took a break to decide what to do with him and came back with this." The entire proclamation was laced with barely concealed rage.

Jim swore and focused on his first officer. The more audible reactions had stopped, but his chest still heaved, his jaw was clenched, and sounds that did escape were small and desperate and frustrated—determined, but frustrated.

But Jim didn't want to speak up. Despite the greater level of pain it seemed like Spock was gaining control, little by little even though it was taking much more effort this time around. Kirk didn't want to disturb anything and leave Spock open to the full force of it all again as he had been when it hit him unawares.

He looked at Bones, and the doctor seemed to understand. McCoy fell silent with him, and they waited, anxiously. Spock's eyes were shut tight, and he didn't move for a long, long time. The only further indications he was succeeding in his efforts were the lessening frequency of the small sounds he made, and the slow unclenching of the muscles around his eyes. The rest of him still rested against Jim's shoulder, though rest wasn't really the word; he was far too tense for that.

When the Vulcan finally opened his eyes Jim couldn't decide whether to be relieved or not. He had gained control—the pain had not stopped; the continued glowing of the metal rings told them that—but he looked awful. It was clear he was attempting not to, but the dark circles beneath his eyes gave him away.

He sat up slowly, unhindered, Kirk and McCoy still hesitant to say or do anything for fear of breaking his concentration.

"I can return to working now," was the first thing he said.

Bones reacted immediately. "Are you crazy—?!"

Jim, however, saw a better tactic, and he held up a hand to quiet the doctor. "Spock," he said gently. He reached and not unkindly pried one of his first offer's arms away from his body and held it out. Spock's hands were shaking. "You can't work like this."

Another memory, all too recent—Spock in his quarters, arms shaking when Jim caught one of them as he tried to get an answer, as he tried to figure out what was wrong with his friend and why he needed, so desperately, to return to Vulcan. Spock, vulnerable in a way Jim had never seen him so before. It hadn't sat well with him then, and it didn't now. Not when he knew how much it meant to Spock _not_ to be vulnerable. To be Vulcan.

Spock, ever himself, did not snatch his hand away as Jim would have in his position. He waited patiently, instead, for Kirk to let it go before drawing it back.

"I can supervise. I can still be of assistance."

Jim nodded warily. "Of course." He had to hold off Bones at that, but what other answer could he give?

Spock nodded in return and got to his feet. Jim followed him back to the open panel and work resumed, though now with Jim getting into the guts of the thing while his first officer stood beside him rather than the other way around. Spock was much better at this, but Jim did know what he was doing. He didn't always need the Vulcan's instructions, and when he did he tried not to think about the fact that sometimes the answer to a question took more time than was usual for Spock.

He also tried to ignore Bones, who didn't seem to have anything better to do than scan Spock with the medical tricorder and scowl. Spock was ignoring him too, and somehow it was the lack of banter that bothered Jim the most.

It didn't help either, though, that making this open panel useful was not working. They hadn't affected the door in the slightest. Some of the guts of the wall were a completely unfamiliar type of power conduit altogether, and even if they knew what they were doing with the wires, it didn't appear to matter. The part of it they didn't understand was keeping them from accomplishing anything.

"Why don't you try to_ use_ those blasted things on Spock's wrists?" McCoy suggested eventually, frustrated. "Obviously there's some kind of power in them. Maybe they could short themselves and the door out and all our problems would be solved."

Jim shook his head. "We don't know what _kind_ of power it is. Too risky." He managed a tight grin. "We don't want to blow his arms off, after all, right, Mr. Spock?"

"That would not be a preferable outcome, no," the Vulcan deadpanned.

At that Jim managed to keep his smile for a few seconds more—until he'd looked at his first officer long enough to realize that a thin sheen of sweat covered his forehead. Or he thought it did. It could have been a trick of the light, but…no. No, that was definitely the beginnings of sweat. Damnit. Making a Vulcan sweat was _not _easy; Jim didn't think he'd seen Spock sweat once even through the entire incident at Deneva, but here he was doing it.

Sometimes Jim almost wished _he_ were telepathic, and now was one of those times. He wished he could communicate what he saw to Bones without Spock knowing, but then again maybe it was better if McCoy didn't notice. The doctor was worried enough as it was, and Jim was relatively sure his friend was still harboring some of the guilt he'd felt over nearly permanently blinding Spock in trying to free him of the neural parasite a couple of months back. That had to be hard enough on him, and the last thing Jim wanted to do was add to it.

"Spock, why don't you take a break?" Jim suggested.

"That is not necessary, Captain."

"The hell it isn't; don't make me order it." Spock raised an eyebrow and glanced at McCoy, too, who didn't have to say anything to make it clear he agreed. "Go on, Spock," Jim said.

Finally he did. He nodded and moved off, and while the lack of further protest was worrying at least he sat down. He sat against a wall and stared out at nothing, probably concentrating on control.

Jim let out a breath and went back to work. He was beginning to tire himself, but he ignored it. Getting Spock the hell out of here was much more important than that, or the fact that he hadn't eaten breakfast.

It took more time, and maybe it was just pure dumb luck—he certainly didn't understand the more alien parts of the workings any better—but finally something happened.

It seemed unreal when there was a loud mechanical hiss, and the door slid open. Kirk jumped back a little, surprised. When he looked down Spock and Bones were looking at the opening mildly, not moving yet, apparently not believing it either.

McCoy, who had taken a seat on the floor next to Spock, finally stood up. "I'll be damned."

Jim motioned to empty corridor that stretched beyond the door. "Gentlemen, I believe that's our cue to leave." Spock, however, was still sitting. "Spock?" Jim went to him, and just in the few steps it took to get there his first offer's head ticked more than once. Still, the Vulcan looked up at him and moved as if to stand. Jim held out a hand, which paused him in that effort.

Spock didn't hesitate long before taking it, and Bones caught his other arm as he came up. "We've got to get these things off of him first, Jim. We can't leave the surface until then; we don't know what it'd do to him."

"Doctor, while I may not have emotional responses to such an action, I would still prefer it if you did not speak as if I were not here."

"Yes, yes, you're both right, now come on," Jim said quickly, urging them out the door. They needed to get going before what they were doing was noticed.

Spock broke away from both of them and went out first, as if to scout ahead.

He didn't make it three steps before he collapsed.

"Spock!" This time it was Bones who called to him and jumped to help. Jim stayed frozen for a long moment or two, horrified as the metal rings' glow flared brighter and his first officer and friend shivered on his knees and shouted.

He didn't _stop_ shouting, which really was not something that should have been happening, and McCoy had the tricorder's scanner out again by now. "Jim!" The doctor yelling at him spurred him to motion, and he moved quickly down to Spock's side as Bones scanned him.

"Bones, what—?"

"I don't know, Jim! He tried to leave and this happened!"

_**Return with him to the confinement area, or he will die.**_

Damnit. Jim looked up, and his grip on Spock's shoulder's tightened. "Haven't you done enough! We understand! Stop this! Leave him alone!"

_**Return now, or he will die. **_

With that the bracelets flared again, and Spock jerked back into Jim as if physically struck. This time he screamed, and it was not a sound Kirk had ever thought he would hear from a Vulcan. It certainly wasn't one he _wanted_ to hear. He felt sick.

"Jim, he will! He'll die if this doesn't stop!" Bones confirmed, panicked and clearly angry with his tricorder. "There's nothing I can do!"

"All right!" Jim growled at the voice. "All right, just stop!"

It stopped. The bracelets grew dark entirely and Spock was suddenly dead weight, unconscious. They certainly weren't going anywhere now.

Jim swallowed hard and got to his feet, and Bones helped him drag Spock back the few feet into their prison. The door shut again behind them, and the panel sparked and sputtered of it's own accord. Once glance told Kirk it would be useless now. He let out a breath of anger and dropped to sit on the floor by his first officer's head. Bones was already sitting opposite him, already scanning again, making sure Spock was all right.

"Bones?"

It took a moment for him to answer. "He's fine," came the terse answer when there was one.

That much was good.

But what now?


	3. Chapter 3

Thanks ya'll! I hope this new chapter is satisfactory, and I can't wait to hear from ya'll! I also promise that the rather purely depressing reading will be over soon and we'll be on to the rest of the story... :)

Chapter 3

_Captain's Log, Stardate 3397.1_

_ Chief Engineer Scott reporting in the absence of the captain and first officer. The landing party, consisting of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy has now been missing and out of contact for 12.5 hours. For more than eleven of those hours we have been tryin' to determine was has happened to 'em. However, our sensors are meeting an unknown resistance. _

Scotty climbed to his feet from under the panel he was working on in Engineering, and hit the intercom. "Scott to bridge. Is it doin' any good, Mr. Sulu?"

"_We 'are' picking up some sort of small compound beneath the surface several hundred kilometers from the beam-in site, but we still can't penetrate it. We can't even tell whether or not it's some sort of shielding that's keeping us out. We won't know whether we can beam anything or anyone in or out until we know that_."

"Aye," Scotty sighed. "Well, ah suppose you'll be keepin' the con then, Mr. Sulu. Send me any new readings you've got down here, and I'll be seein' what I can do about it. Ya know where I'll be if you need me on the bridge."

"_Aye, sir_."

* * *

Waking was as sudden as the onset of unconsciousness had been, and Spock, of course, as a Vulcan, remembered everything that had transpired before. That did not mean it was pleasant to remember, but the memories were there for the perusing just the same.

He did not open his eyes immediately, instead taking stock of any possible damage to his body. There didn't seem to be any—nothing permanent. However, his limbs felt like lead and there was a general feeling of exhaustion. It was nothing a Vulcan could not overcome easily.

When he opened his eyes there was a new problem, briefly. For a long moment his vision was not up to its usual standards, and it took that moment for the yellow shape above him to coalesce into his captain. He knew it was Jim Kirk before that happened, of course, but it was much better to be able to see clearly.

"Spock?"

There were hands holding his shoulders, and he was still on his back. He decided immediately that he shouldn't be. It would only cause the captain and the doctor to worry if he stayed there. It was illogical, but it was the way they were and he had learned, over time, to adapt to it.

"I am quite all right," he said. It wasn't untrue; there was no pain now, which was a considerable improvement over before. When he spoke, though, he realized his throat was dry, and that and other factors caused his voice to come out weaker and more raspy than he would have preferred. Indeed, Jim frowned, and Spock cleared his throat and tried again as he started to sit up. "I am—"

That was as far as he managed before he was cut off both verbally and physically when Doctor McCoy placed his own grip on Spock's upper arm to keep him down. He was left with only his elbows under him.

"No you don't. You need to rest."

"Doctor, your concern is appreciated, but unnecessary." He held up a wrist, where the metal rings were dark. "As you can see, I am unhindered at the moment."

"That doesn't change what happened before you passed out, Spock," Jim said.

"I believe that if I were human, that term might be taken as offensive. "

"Not after what they did to you," McCoy growled. The anger was evident in his tone, but he removed his hand and allowed Spock to sit up. The Vulcan could have done so even if the doctor hadn't moved, but he had not wished to cause offense.

McCoy was the ship's chief medical officer, after all, and he deserved to be listened to—not that Spock would ever tell him such a thing.

Spock sat up, feeling the heavy drag of weakness on his body but ignoring it. The information was compartmentalized and stored away, and it was much easier to do so with that than with the pain of before. Both the captain and doctor had hands out as if to spot him, in case they were needed, but they let their arms drop when they saw they were not.

"I assure you, I am fine."

"All right, Spock," Jim sighed wearily. "But we're still no closer to getting out of here." He nodded up to the panel they had spent so many hours' work on. "They blew the circuits the minute we were back inside."

"And why, may I ask, are we back inside?"

"Because they were going to kill you if we didn't come back in here!" McCoy snapped.

Spock just looked at them, realizing now that his memories were not, in fact, as intact as he thought. He remembered the pain—that he had never felt its like—and he remembered Jim holding onto him and he remembered both of his companions shouting—Jim near enough to his sensitive Vulcan ears to be painful, but that was hardly a concern at the time—and he remembered _knowing _he would die if the pain as it was then did not stop. He didn't remember _how_ he knew. He didn't remember it being said, or the threat on his life.

He didn't remember his friends acquiescing, sacrificing their chance at freedom for him, though that was apparently what had happened. Granted, if nothing had changed in their captors' original intentions they would all be free at some point anyhow, but…it still seemed like it was something he should remember. It was still a meaningful gesture—illogical, but meaningful. Spock could recognize such things, after having humans as friend for so long.

All of this went through his mind in no more than a very few seconds, and he blinked once. "Indeed."

The loss of memory clarity should not have disturbed him. In truth, considering the amount of stimulation his brain and body had been enduring at the time it was completely reasonable that his mind had not been able to accurately record every detail. He told himself the same would have been true even of a full Vulcan. The doctor had not been entirely wrong several hours ago; controlling pain as a thing of the mind was one matter, but damaging levels of negative stimulation was quite another. If it had continued then there _would_ have been physical damage. It would have killed him.

Therefore, it was illogical for the memory insufficiency to disturb him.

But it did.

The fact that it did disturbed him further.

None of these thoughts were apparent outwardly, of course, or at least they were not meant to be. But his friends, attentive as they were, were still looking at him with concern.

It was not always as reassuring an action as they doubtless intended it to be.

"Spock?"

It was Jim again, asking so many questions with only his name. "What of the other panel?" he asked, instead of answering.

"I don't think anything happened to it, but I don't think it'd be much help, either. They've already proven that just getting that door open isn't going to be enough to get us out of here."

He should have had an alternative to offer already. In any other circumstance he would have, but his mind was sluggish from overwork and exhaustion. "I…am sorry, captain. I do not have another solution as of yet."

Kirk just gave him the sympathetic, knowing smile that was one of his signatures. "It's all right, Mr. Spock. I don't think any of us are running on all engines at the moment."

Spock nodded a bit in acknowledgement, and he had to admit that Jim's capacity for understanding often touched him.

Still, he wanted to stand—to get to his feet and attempt to do _something_, because if he did that perhaps the answer would come to him, and then Kirk and McCoy would be less concerned. It made no sense to simply sit here, anyhow, as the doctor wanted him to do, when he could be up and doing something productive. Perhaps he didn't yet know what that productive activity would be, but it would never present itself if he stayed here on the floor.

Without a word he started to stand, and this time McCoy did not move to stop him even though he did not look happy about it. On the contrary he seemed as if he might try to help.

They both left him alone, however. He knew they were watching him warily, but they let him get to his feet on his own and he was thankful for the consideration.

However, he only made it halfway up before the pain began again and turned his legs immediately to jelly.

He was saved the impact of his knees with the floor when Kirk and McCoy caught his arms and lowered him more slowly. The doctor, of course, was already swearing mightily.

At least this time, Spock thought, he had not cried out. That, though, was not likely to last. The pain was not remaining constant this time. It was in the process of increasing—not exponentially, and not to levels as dangerous as when their captors had threatened to take his life, but certainly to levels worse than anything before that incident.

Then, he had thought that succeeding in opening the door would lead to freedom—to the end of the pain.

That had not happened. He had wanted it to happen. To alleviate the captain's and the doctor's worries, of course. This situation distressed them, and he did not wish to cause them distress. He regretted that they were still here, and that the ordeal was not yet over.

For Jim and McCoy's sake.

Spock focused again on control. It was becoming more difficult. He could hear Jim's voice, and the doctor, but he had to shut them out to gain enough control to keep silent. By the time he came back to the world they had pulled him to the side of their prison to let him rest against a wall—not that they had let him go.

"Spock!"

The Vulcan jerked at the shout by his ear. "I can hear you quite well, Doctor."

"Well you couldn't a minute ago."

"I was in meditation."

"Sure, if checking out to manage pain is meditation. That's a common mental defense in humans, you know."

"I am aware…however, I am not human, and that is not what I was engaged in. It is called meditation for a reason, Doctor…it is quite different and distinct from what you term 'checking out.'"

As often as he engaged in these debates with the doctor, it was still a mystery to Spock as to why he continued to do so. They served no logical purpose, and yet he allowed them to happen often. Indeed, he encouraged them and sometimes put great effort into his responses.

If one of his human friends were to ask, he supposed he would have to tell them that the closest answer was that he enjoyed the exchanges—not in the same way they understood the word 'enjoyment,' but it would be the only adequate equivocation. And beyond that, he did not know.

However, this time it seemed as if he had misjudged the doctor's behavior. What he thought was their usual banter was not, in fact, merely that. McCoy looked rather serious now. "You don't have to defend yourself to me, Spock. I'm a doctor. I know what this is doing to you, and that you have to deal with it somehow. You have nothing to be ashamed of; we're just worried about you, is all."

If he were not distracted just now he might have marveled at the unusual emotional directness at the end of the doctor's short speech, but as it was he had no extra capacity for it.

Anyhow, was that what he had been doing? Defending himself? He had not been conscious of any such intent, yet…

Spock glanced from McCoy to Kirk, who had the more somber and somewhat distraught version of his understanding gaze in place now.

"Your assessment assumes emotion, Doctor—which I do not have."

"Whatever you want to tell yourself."

He raised an eyebrow, but when neither of them answered the gesture in good humor he let it go. They released his arms that they both still had hold of, though they did not go anywhere. They settled against the wall on either side of him, with barely enough space for comfort.

Then again, in another way perhaps it was more reassuring to have them near. It was an illogical thing to…feel, and yet Spock did.

Illogical.

He was not able to mull over the strange phenomenon any further. The increasing pain made it impossible to focus on little more than control.

He could not have gotten up to do anything even if there had been something to do, even if he had wanted to.

* * *

Complete control did not last long for Spock this time, despite the fact that he didn't move from his place against the wall. Soon enough he was crumpled rather than sitting upright, his brow knitted rather than not, and when the heavier breaths and pained sounds began Jim couldn't just sit there any more.

He got up and took the tricorder from Bones, but he hadn't taken more than a step toward the other panel when it sparked, too. It was still closed and all he saw was the smoke spilling from the cracks, but it was still very clear that the same thing had happened to it as to the first.

It was useless as well. Now there really WAS nothing they could do.

Jim's jaw clenched, and he saw Bones all but gaping at the second smoking panel. "How do they expect to do anything with nothing but fried circuitry?" Kirk asked in frustration.

"Use their version of transporters to get us out of here when they want us gone, I suspect; it must be worth at least temporarily sacrificing this room's functionality to keep us here for now. They must either have others, or know they can repair it once we're gone, or both."

"Logical…Doctor."

McCoy blinked and glanced back at Spock. "Thank you…I guess." Jim, though, could see how touched Bones was by the Vulcan's comment, even if Spock didn't know it himself. Either way, Spock's only answer was a small nod.

Despite the situation Jim might have smiled if his Vulcan friend hadn't groaned after that.

All that did, of course, was fuel the captain's anger.

"How much longer must this go on!" he demanded. To his surprise, the voice actually answered.

_**It might have been over at this time, but he defies us with his resistance.**_

"His—" Jim didn't even try to reign in his response to that, and Bones was on his feet in an instant. If either of them were angry before, it was nothing compared to now.

"Have you lost your alien minds!" McCoy growled.

"It isn't defiance!" Jim shouted. "Restraint is the way of his people! So you torment him; would you take his dignity as well? It's the way he is! How can you punish him for it!"

_**What is, is.**_

"That doesn't damn well mean anything!" Bones retorted.

"Stop this!" Jim demanded again, motioning to Spock. "You've done enough to him. Just because he doesn't much show it doesn't mean he doesn't feel pain. We've learned your lesson! Stop!"

"Captain!"

The cry was a gasp followed by other sounds, and when Jim looked down from the ceiling he'd been ranting toward Bones was already crouching at Spock's side again. It was Spock who had called to him, and the Vulcan was fighting for control again and he was losing this time.

"Captain…Doctor…I believe you are…only provoking them…please do n—" He cut off and his eyes clenched shut. Jim realized now that the bracelets were flaring in brightness again; not as bright as before, when they nearly lost Spock, but brighter than a moment ago. And even through everything at Deneva, Jim had never seen Spock curl in on himself in pain the way he was now.

"No," Jim protested in panic. "Don't do this because of us."

His plea fell on deaf ears, wherever they were.

* * *

"_We're reading three life-forms in the compound now—two human, one Vulcan. It's our people all right. But we can't cut through the interference enough to beam them out. Not yet. And I think they're in trouble, Scotty. We're reading their communicator signals on the other side of the underground structure entirely. They don't have their communicators or weapons on them. Whoever has them, they're probably prisoners."_

"Don't haf'ta tell me twice, Mr. Sulu. I'm way ahead of you—have more than a few ideas on how to push that transporter signal through, I do. We'll have 'em out 'a there in no time."

"_I hope so, sir_."

* * *

"Can't you just give him what you do have?"

"Every bit of sedative I've got on me would only make him a little groggy at this point, and that might be worse for him than better. As much as I hate to admit it, those Vulcan mind tricks of his are helping. They have from the beginning, and just because they're not working near as well now as they were before doesn't mean he doesn't need them. If he were even more tired or out of it he wouldn't be able to concentrate, and he'd be in _more_ pain—not less."

"Bones, I can't just stand here and—"

"Do you think I can! What do you want me to do, Jim? We have no avenues of escape to explore, and we can't help him. We're even more helpless here than we were on Deneva, and I hate it just as much as you do. I didn't want it to turn out this way either."

"Then what are we supposed to do?"

"Be here for him. You're good at that." McCoy paused. "That, and…maybe if I gave him a stimulant it'd help his concentration—help him stay a little more on top of it. It'd be completely counter-intuitive if he were human, but as he likes to point out, he isn't."

Jim only nodded tiredly.

"Doctor…"

The quiet rasped called brought them out of their whispered conversation. Before they'd temporarily left him they'd pulled him carefully along the wall to the corner, where the meeting of the two walls would support him more effectively than one. He needed the extra help now to stay somewhat upright, but they knew him. They knew he would rather have it from inanimate objects than from them—or that his Vulcan dignity preferred that, anyhow. They wanted to give him as much of that as they could.

They went back to him now, and Bones was frowning before they got there. It was something specific. Jim knew that look, but he didn't know what it was until he really listened.

Rather than being simply heavier and shorter Spock's breathing had taken on a troubling hitching quality. "Breathing is…becoming somewhat difficult," the Vulcan admitted. "I do not…know what you could do…however, the two of you seem to…wish to know of any developments."

Jim settled on the ground by Spock again, nearly not remembering to leave even an inch or two of space; all he wanted to do was help, and he felt as if he wasn't doing that leaving space—not being right there, not holding him up, not offering that kind of direct help. He had to remember that being there could mean different things. It was something he had trouble adjusting to with his Vulcan first officer.

McCoy was already scanning. "Whether or not I can do anything depends on what's causing it, and with whatever exactly these things are doing on top of your Vulcan physiology hell knows whether I'd ever figure that out," he grumbled.

"I have every confidence in you, Doctor…"

Bones snorted. "Now we _know_ this is getting to you." He let out a breath. "You probably heard every word we said over there. I can give you a stimulant and that might help with you and your Vulcan whatever-it-is. Do you want it, or not?"

"If it is the only…alternative to nothing, then I suppose I will have to agree."

"You don't have to. You know how your Vulcan magic works better than I do. Now would it help, or wouldn't it?"

"I believe that it would."

"All right then."

"What about his breathing? What else is wrong?" Jim asked as the doctor administered the stimulant.

"I'm getting around to that. I'll have to see what this does to help him, first."

It did seem to help. For a while Spock was quiet, he sat straighter. He still did not get up, but he was more in control and there seemed to be less strain. The hitching was still there, but he was breathing easier in every other way so Bones wasn't overly worried about it. He couldn't find the cause anyhow. Jim took advantage of the opportunity to worry a little less and was on his feet, pounding at walls in any attempt to find something.

He didn't find anything, but then again he hadn't expected to.

When it seemed the hypo was wearing off and Spock was having a harder time of it again he came back. He sat down. He was there. So was Bones.

Jim wondered if the hypo had been a good idea after all. They didn't have any more, and it hadn't lasted as long as they'd hoped—maybe an hour or two, when they'd hoped for several—and Spock seemed even more exhausted now. As a result he was more vocal, and Jim had to do _something_. He wasn't really aware he'd moved at all until he had a hand wrapped around his first offer's wrist—farther up than where the bracelet rested, of course, and damn the things.

Whether he meant it to be comforting, or a distraction, or what he didn't know; he only knew he wanted to help, and Spock didn't pull his arm away. So Jim held on.

It continued to get worse. McCoy's face pinched more and more in anger, and Jim tried to stay calm for Spock's sake, and when his first officer finally just tipped over into his shoulder Jim didn't argue. It was awkward—the Vulcan was taller than he, and heavy—but that didn't matter right now.

"Spock…"

The only answer was a long groan and a shiver. He really didn't seem to be able to breathe very well anymore, either. The hitching was worse.

Jim swallowed. "Bones—"

McCoy shook his head at his tricorder, and his eyes were nearly wild. "They have to stop. We're losing him."

There had NEVER been a better moment for what happened then, as the golden glow of the Enterprise's transporter beams abruptly surrounded them.

_Oh god, Scotty, bless you._


	4. Chapter 4

Sorry this took a little longer; had to take finals and make the trip home for Thanksgiving and such. I hope you enjoy the chapter, and thanks for reading. :) I can't wait to hear what ya"ll think! :)

Chapter 4

Their prison dissolved, and the Enterprise transporter room formed around them, and Jim had never been more relieved in his life. As soon as the beam released them Bones was on his feet, and all of them were glad to see the medical team that was already waiting.

Either it was a precaution, or when they'd located their lifesigns the sensors must have picked up abnormal readings—enough to make it clear that Spock was in some kind of distress or medical trouble.

"It's about time," McCoy huffed. "Help me get him on the gurney." There was one there, with the medical team led by Nurse Chapel.

Jim didn't know if Spock had even realized anything had happened. He was still crumpled over the captain's shoulder.

"_Transporter room, have you got 'em_?" It was Scotty's voice, over the intercom, and transporter chief answered in the affirmative as Chapel and the male nurse with her helped Bones haul Spock up off the transporter pad. Jim followed them up, still supporting Spock until he was sure they had him. The Vulcan was obviously still in pain, but the metal rings—

They were still glowing. Jim wasn't sure why part of him had assumed (hoped?) that leaving the planet would neutralize them. Then again, orbit wasn't very far for such an advanced civilization as their captors to send a signal.

A warning knot in his gut tightened, just before the glowing bracelets flared much brighter and Spock started to scream.

Jim didn't wait for Bones to yell at him to tell him what he already knew. He bolted for the intercom and punched it. "They're not happy we left!" McCoy shouted anyway.

"Scotty, get us out of orbit! Away from the planet! Maximum warp, now!" Jim ordered.

"_Sir…_?"

"Do it now or Spock is dead! Heading doesn't matter!"

There was a quick affirmative, and a moment later Jim felt the faint rumbling of the deck under his feet that told him they were moving, and fast. Satisfied, the captain hurried back to the medical team just as it hurried out into the corridor.

"We have to get those things off of him. If we're not far enough away in time—"

Bones cut him off. "Don't you think I know that! If we can keep him still enough I could probably get them off with a surgical laser, but we've got to get him to sickbay for that." That, of course, would explain why the med team was all but sprinting down the corridor—as fast as they could go pushing a gurney with a thrashing Vulcan as its cargo.

Jim ran with them, helping Chapel to hold Spock while the male nurse did most of the pushing and Bones rummaged through the fresh med kit his team had given him and tried hyposprays—heavier doses than he'd had access to in their prison. He seemed to be hoping something would help—something would calm Spock, or knock him out, or maybe just counteract the effects of the bracelets long enough to make sure he wouldn't die on them before they could free him of them.

Nothing seemed to help at all, but what did he know? He did know that Spock was still screaming when he could actually manage to get any air, and that McCoy became more and more tight-lipped the closer they got to sickbay. Chapel, to her credit—considering the rather large crush on the Vulcan science officer that _everyone_ knew she had—remained level-headed.

It was all something of a blur to Jim from that point. They rushed Spock into the surgery ward, got him on an operating table and strapped him down, but restraints only did so much. They needed more in the form of orderlies holding him still, because sedatives had no effect and the last thing they needed was for Bones to cut his hand off.

Jim found himself holding one arm down while the doctor started on the other, trying to cut through the metal ring.

Spock was weakening. Without anyone telling him Jim knew they were running out of time. His first offer was still shouting and struggling against the pain, but his movements were less pronounced and his cries weaker and becoming fewer and farther between—finally more desperate gasps than anything else.

"Bones, what's taking so long!"

"He told you this metal was unfamiliar! It's strong. It's working, the cutting laser's getting through, just not fast enough."

"Speed it up!"

"Not if you don't want me to kill him myself!"

Kirk swore loudly. "Why aren't we far enough away?"

One by one the orderlies were peeling away, unneeded, and in a panicked bid to keep his friend with them Jim unstrapped the arm he was keeping down and held it, squeezing his first officer's hand. "Spock, we'll have these things off of you soon, just hold on. _Don't go anywhere_, do you hear me? That's an order!"

It drew Spock's attention, focused him somewhat, and Bones didn't say anything, didn't break his own concentration, but something in the tilt of his head told Jim he approved of the effort.

He heard McCoy quietly ordering a stimulant from Nurse Chapel, and he knew he had to _keep_ Spock's attention. This was going downhill fast.

The hand in his squeezed back weakly, and Spock fought to focus on him. "Jim—"

"Good! Good, talk to me."

Spock shook his head once. "Jim—" He cut off again, in a shout this time, when a sudden spasm ripped through him. For a moment he was squeezing Kirk's hand much more tightly, but then the strength in the grip was abruptly gone again. The Vulcan's eyelids were dropping.

"Bones!" He looked up to check the progress. "You're more than halfway through that thing; how is it still working?"

"How am I supposed to know!"

Spock shouted again, but then the bracelets were suddenly a little less bright. Both of them. Maybe they were starting to gain enough distance.

At the very least, it allowed Spock to focus on his captain a bit better. "Jim," he gasped. "Please, I must—if I am to—I am sorry, I must….please…"

There was too much adrenaline fogging his mind; Jim didn't realize what Spock meant until the Vulcan released his hand and tried to reach for the captain's face. His arm fell back, too weak, and Jim caught it and pulled it up. He didn't know why Spock was trying to meld _now_, but he knew he couldn't say no if he could help. Maybe it could keep Spock here long enough, give him strength…Jim didn't know, but he held his first officer's hand to his face and leaned closer to make it easier for him to position his fingers.

Pain. The first thing he felt was the pain and he doubled over; he thought he heard himself shout but he wasn't sure. He felt the apology, too—not in words; nothing quite in words—but Spock was sorry. He had no strength left with which to protect Jim from the pain and he was free to disengage at any time, but Jim could also feel how _important_ this was. Whatever Spock was trying to do _needed_ to be done, and Jim held on.

More apology. This was taking longer than it should with the pain hindering him, with his mind already attempting to shut down.

And all of a sudden Jim knew that Spock believed he was going to die.

NO. No no no. You're not going to die.

Jim, please do not fight. I must—

You are NOT going to die!

There was more slipping through as their minds grew closer, and Jim knew it but he wasn't paying attention to it now.

Damnit, Spock, you're not going anywhere—

It was all gone. The link was broken, and Jim was catching Spock's arm as it dropped again. Everything inside him twisted. His first thought was that the battle was lost and Spock was gone already.

Then he heard the clatter on the floor. He looked down at his feet and found the metal ring, dark and open of its own accord.

They'd made it far enough away from the planet.

"Spock…?" The Vulcan was still now, and quiet save for the difficulty breathing that had remained. For a moment he found Kirk's eyes again, but then he was unconscious.

McCoy gave him another hypo, and Jim swallowed in relief as Spock's breathing evened out in his sleep. He glanced at the arm he was still holding. Something from the retracting bracelet had scratched or punctured the skin and there was a small amount of green blood smeared on the inside of Spock's wrist, but the area where the offending device had rested seemed otherwise unharmed. Jim called the small damaged area to the doctor's attention before carefully lowering his first officer's arm to the table.

"Will he be all right?"

Bones let out a heavy breath, already studying the readings on the display above the table. "I don't know, Jim. He almost died; he _would_ have in another minute or two. We've got to stabilize him, assess any real damage…why don't you go eat something and get some rest and I'll call you as soon as we know anything?"

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He didn't know what to say anymore. What to do. He was too tired. But he didn't want to leave until he knew Spock was all right, and there was nothing wrong with that right now, was there? There were no other pressing emergencies. He wasn't needed on the bridge. He didn't have to be the captain at the moment.

McCoy looked at him long enough to figure all of that out for himself.

"Or you could just rest in my office."

Jim managed a brittle smile. "Thanks, Bones."

He found an intercom panel, let Scotty know they could stop the mad dash, and did just that. Whether he wanted to be or not he was asleep almost before he found McCoy's chair.

* * *

Jim heard his name faintly, felt a hand on his shoulder, but it was remembering what had happened just before he'd drifted off that really woke him.

"Spock—!"

"Take it easy, Jim, he's all right. He's stable and resting."

The captain looked up groggily at McCoy. "What? Good…good. Uhm…how long have I been out?"

"Just an hour or two. You need more, and that's an order, but I thought you'd want to move to your quarters now."

Jim rose unsteadily to his feet, really feeling the drain of the past 24 hours or so now that any adrenaline was gone. "Sure." He moved past Bones, but at the doctor's office door he turned right instead of left. He couldn't leave just yet.

McCoy knew where he was going. "Jim, he's going to be _fine_. Go to your quarters and sleep. And eat something soon, all right?"

"In a minute, Bones. I trust you. I just want to check on him for myself. Captain's prerogative." And he was already there, turning the corner into the main ward. Only one bed was occupied. Spock was in patient garb now, a blanket pulled up to his chest and sleeping. The monitor above him softly beeped out readings that looked relatively normal for a Vulcan, as far as Kirk knew.

He let out a breath that he almost felt he'd been holding for days.

"It really is only sleep," Bones provided without prodding. "He may not come out of it for a while—which is just fine in his condition—but that's all it is. No Vulcan trances or any such thing; he's probably too weak for any of that anyhow. But there's no need for it. Even after all of that at the end there's no real damage—nerves over-stimulated, yes, but not damaged. Nothing time and rest won't fix. It was the shock to his nervous system that would have killed him, not any physical damage."

The doctor was quiet for a moment, before he continued more quietly. "That last bout sure took a hell of a lot out of him, though—took everything he had, really, to hold on long enough. You may be the only reason he managed to do it, too."

Kirk shook his head slightly. "I don't know, Bones. I sure didn't feel like I was doing much. He still thought he was going to die…he'd resigned himself to it. I could _feel_ it, when he was trying to meld with me. I knew it. He was only holding on because he had to do something first. With the mild meld. I..I don't know what." As he thought about it, more came back, and he was swallowing. "But he was done, Bones. As soon as he'd….whatever he was trying to do…he was going to let go. It was over for him."

He paused, as something else came to him. Something else he'd felt. There was a new knot in his gut now. "He just wanted the pain to end."

McCoy looked just as troubled as he was over all of that. "Then I guess we'd better be damned glad that signal had a limit."

Jim nodded wearily, and both of them were silent for a long time.

"Bones, are you sure he'll be all right?"

"Physically, yes. It'll just take time for him to get his strength back. Other than that…we won't really know until he wakes up." The doctor shrugged. "But this is Spock we're talking about."

"Right…" Jim cleared his throat. "Anyway, I'll check in on the bridge." When McCoy looked like he would protest, he quickly added, "No more than ten minutes, and I'll be on my way to my quarters. Does that satisfy you?"

"I suppose it'll have to."

Jim thanked him for the update again and left sickbay. He took his time on the way to the bridge, trying to lose himself in the Enterprise, his home, glad to be back in it, trying to forget the worst parts of the last day or so.

Even though it was actually the middle of the current day, he expected to find a skeleton crew on the bridge—junior officers holding down the fort while those like Scotty and Sulu and Uhura and Chekov slept. He knew them and he was sure they hadn't while he and the rest of the landing party were missing.

But they were all still there. It was plain enough looking at them that they hadn't slept, but they were there just the same.

"Captain!" Uhura said first. At her call the others swiveled in their chairs.

Jim blinked at them, still just outside the turbolift. "What the devil are all of you still doing awake?"

"Waitin' for news, sir," Scotty said, standing from the center seat. "The situation seemed pretty dire when you came aboard."

"Doctor McCoy didn't contact you?"

"A bit after you took us off warp he called up ta tell us all ta turn over the bridge and get some sleep, but nothin' more."

"You had the con, Mr. Scott. If anything was wrong he would have let you know."

The engineer sounded almost skeptical when he answered. "Of course, Captain, it's only—"

Uhura cut in. "It's just, when you called from the transporter room, sir, we could hear…" She trailed off uncomfortably.

"Everything," Sulu finished for her. "We could hear everything."

"It didna sound good, to say the least," Scotty added quietly. "Couldn't well leave the ship to the junior officers if we were ta have another crises on our hands."

"Is ewereything really all right, Keptin?" Chekov asked.

There was quiet for a moment, and then Uhura asked the question they were really asking anyway. "Is Mr. Spock all right, sir?"

Jim was tired enough that it took that long for everything they were saying to process—for him to realize why they were still here.

They'd heard everything in the background, when he'd called Scotty from the transporter room to order the jump to warp. They'd heard Spock screaming, McCoy barking orders, his own panic, all of it. They'd been concerned for Spock, first, of course. Perhaps they'd even worried that he hadn't made it—that he hadn't and it wasn't something the captain and doctor wanted to announce immediately. Neither of them emerging from sickbay for the past two hours probably had not helped to keep such a worry from formulating.

That was his fault. He'd been asleep on his feet, really, when he'd called the bridge again to let Scotty know they could drop out of high warp. He'd been brief. He'd said nothing about Spock, and he should have, especially as awful as he must have sounded by that point.

They must have really been afraid that Spock might be gone and no one wanted to tell them yet. Scotty's last comment told him, too, that they'd been concerned about the effect such an event might have had on their captain if it had occurred. They'd been worried about both of them.

At this point, on this particular day, after everything that had happened, realizing anew just how much his senior staff cared—about him, Spock, each other, all of it—was very nearly too much for Jim to bear.

"Yes," he said quickly, before the lump starting in his throat could take shape. "Yes, Mr. Spock is all right." All of them visibly relaxed at that. "It's difficult to explain beyond that and I won't try, but he'll be all right." He gave a tired chuckle. "And I'm sure that the doctor will be more than happy to let all of you knew when visiting hours are once he's awake. But for now he's resting, and so should we, I think."

There was a chorus of relieved 'Aye, sirs' and Jim smiled. The smile was much more genuine this time.

* * *

Jim stayed on the bridge long enough to see the relief crew get there, and to make sure that the rest of his senior staff did indeed all head straight to their quarters, too. Only then did he retreat to his own. A sonic shower and what of a meal he could get down later—his yeoman shook her head at how little it was—and he was asleep again.

Sleep, however, was fitful now. He dreamed, but the dreams weren't entirely his own and he didn't understand how he knew that, either. He only knew they were, for the most part, nightmares, and that they woke him.

He sat up quickly, automatically clinging to the only pieces of the dreams that had been good—or less than horrible. It was those pieces he was able to retain, and from them he inferred much of what the rest had consisted of.

It also gave him an idea of where all of it had come from. _Spock…_

Jim got to his feet and found a shirt. As soon as his door opened into the dim nighttime corridors he knew he had slept quite a while.

He made his way quietly to sickbay. There weren't many personnel there. There would be a couple of nurses and one of the lower-ranked doctors on call for emergencies for the night, but they were nowhere to be found in the front compartments of sickbay. They were likely back in the offices or labs, doing long-needed paperwork or lab tests with the downtime.

That meant there was no-one in the main ward to bother him when he went in and sat on the edge of the bed next to Spock's. He studied his first offer's sleeping face, and he'd hoped to find it peaceful. He'd hoped his hunch was wrong.

It wasn't, at least not entirely. The Vulcan's face seemed troubled, even in sleep. Jim glanced up worriedly, but the indicator on the monitor he'd come to know so well at Deneva—the one that indicated pain—did not show anything out of the ordinary. Spock was technically fine, just as Bones had promised him.

"Jim? What are doing in here at this hour?"

Speak of the devil. Jim twisted in surprise where he sat. "Bones? I could ask you the same thing. Weren't you supposed to be getting some sleep, too?"

"I did. Then I came back. Couldn't sleep anymore."

Jim shrugged. "The same for me, I suppose." He hesitated before asking the next question, waiting for the doctor to make his way over. "Bones…do Vulcans dream like we do?"

"Not nearly as often as we do, but yes. Though I would guess Spock's dream activity would be at least a little closer to ours than a normal Vulcan. Why?"

"What about nightmares?"

"That's just a type of dream, Jim; if you can have dreams, then—why are you asking?" Jim nodded to Spock, and the doctor looked. "Oh…well, I suppose they do," he relented after a moment. The doctor let out a breath. "I wouldn't blame him, after everything that's happened to him."

"No…" Kirk trailed. "Still, it's just…strange to think about. Because even if it _is_ a bad dream and even if it actually affects him, you know he'd never admit to it when he wakes up."

"Of course not. He's a Vulcan."

"Exactly. And strangely enough maybe it's for that reason that I'm worried about him."

"You don't have to tell me twice; I was worried about him when all of this had hardly started," McCoy huffed.

Jim smiled a little. "Not like _you _to admit _that_."

"Well excuse me for caring when some blasted alien goes off _torturing_ a man that happens to be my friend—green-blooded hobgoblin or not. I didn't get a chance for much of that last time; I was too busy worrying about the colonists and worrying later that Spock had been blinded permanently and that I was the cause of it. This time I can feel whatever I please, so I will." Bones pointed an accusing finger at the captain. "And if you _ever_ tell him I said _any_ of this I'll categorically deny it."

"I know you will. Don't worry, Bones; your secret's safe with me."

"It damned well better be. Now what else is bothering you? That's not all of it. I can tell."

Jim looked at Spock again, running over what he could remember of the dreams. "I don't know…it's hard to explain. You didn't…feel what I felt, when he tried to meld with me. We can say we're concerned, and we've said things like that before, but we've never really _known_, have we? There's never _really_ a way to know whether he's always as unaffected by things as he says or if its all just Vulcan stoicism, except for the few instances in which it's been clear. When he found out I was alive after what happened on Vulcan, for instance. We all knew that was emotion. There was no way for him to explain that away; we only let him do it because we respect him too much. We let him keep his dignity because we care; because we know how much it means to him. We picked at him a little, sure, but in the end we let it go because there was nothing else we could do. There's never been anything else we could do. It's the way things work, being his friend.

"But…" Jim shook his head. "I don't think we can just let it go this time. He tried to meld with me, and I think there are…pieces. Things left behind. I _know_ this time. I know he…felt things. I haven't sorted much of it out yet, what's in here, it's all vague," he said, tapping his temple, "because the link wasn't complete. But I'll figure it out. I don't know what's going to come to the surface when he wakes up, if anything. Knowing him, beyond insisting that he won't need nearly as much time for recovery as you'll try to insist on he'll act exactly the way he always does, like nothing's happened at all. But I think I'll know the truth this time, whatever it is."

"Which all means what?"

All of that talking, but he was at a loss now. "I have no idea. That we can help him, maybe, if I know. If he needs help. I'm not sure."

"Well good luck with that. I'm glad you're the one with Vulcan leftovers in your head and not me," McCoy snorted.

Jim just shrugged, but then he smiled again faintly and Bones was looking at him strangely. "I've got one thing straight, at least," he said in explanation. "It was the only thing that was really clear.

"Oh?"

"Yes…I know Spock was…thankful, that we were with him, to use as neutral a word as possible, as I'm sure he would. Not that he would ever say anything about it to us or anyone else anyhow. But he was…he was grateful that that he wasn't alone; that he didn't have to go through any of that alone. I think maybe he was thinking about Deneva—how much he isolated himself those few days, literally and figuratively, to deal with the pain, and that it was different this time. We were there, the whole time. When it was at its worst and we didn't leave his side…you were right, Bones. He noticed that."

Now McCoy was swallowing. "Well…you know, it was all we could do. Nothing special…"

"It was to him."


	5. Chapter 5

Sorry ya'll! The delay was partly shiny-new-toy (other Trek story) and part had to make the trip back to school and start the new quarter. Anyway, I hope ya'll haven't given up on me. :P I can't wait to hear from ya'll! Thanks so much for reading and reviewing! :)

Chapter 5

Spock did not wake up the next day, and McCoy didn't allow Jim to go on duty just yet, either. The doctor wanted him to get more rest.

"As long as you do too, Doctor. That's my condition," the captain said, when Bones handed him the edict before he left sickbay that night.

So Jim spent most of the day in his quarters, resting or trying to, though he made several stops by sickbay between naps. He made an appearance in the rec room that afternoon, too, to boost crew morale and let them know he was all right just by being there. He didn't stay long, though. There wasn't much of interest to him there without his first officer to play chess with.

The next day wasn't much better. Bones wouldn't let him on duty before noon, and even then only for half a shift. By the time he left the bridge that afternoon it already seemed like forever since they'd left the planet. Spock still wasn't awake and Jim ended up back in sickbay, haunting McCoy's office.

"If you're not going to leave you could at least sit out in the ward where Spock _is_ instead of being in here in my way," Bones grumbled.

"I'd look conspicuous out there. I don't want the crew to think I'm worried; what kind of example is that?"

"You _are_ worried. You told me so yourself night before last."

"Yes, but the crew doesn't need to know it."

Bones just shook his head and went about his business, but Jim still heard him grumbling to himself. "Wouldn't matter if they did, they wouldn't think anything of it; it's Spock in there. Still far beyond me, but I'm sure the whole damn ship's concerned—especially every blasted female from stem to stern. Green-blooded woman magnet, doesn't make a damn bit of sense; doesn't bat an eyelash at 'em…"

And though he was still concerned, Jim couldn't help but smile to himself in amusement. He wondered if the doctor knew he was loud enough to be heard.

It wasn't until a little later when he felt…something. He wasn't sure what it was. He'd been planning to go out into the ward to check on his first officer in a bit, but when he felt it he got up and he went right then. Maybe he did it with some sort of sense of purpose about him, because McCoy looked up and followed without a word.

When they reached Spock's bedside they realized immediately that the readings on the monitor had ticked up toward conscious levels. He was waking up.

"He's coming out of it," Bones observed aloud. "How did you…? You acted like you knew, Jim."

"I did. I mean, I knew _something_. Maybe it's the mind meld. I knew I needed to come in here, at least."

"That's more than what you were saying two nights ago. That seems to indicate some kind of continued contact. We've never seen anything like that happen after one of his mind-links before."

"Well this one was interrupted; it's a different situation. Listen, Bones, I'll talk to him about it later, when he's stronger. Don't say anything to him for now. There's no need to bother him about it yet, and it may be nothing anyway."

The doctor's eyebrows went up skeptically. "All right… as long as you're sure it isn't a problem."

"No, no problem. Just a little strange, is all."

Spock stirred, drawing their attention, and in another moment or two his eyes opened.

Jim smiled. "Mr. Spock. Nice of you to join us."

The Vulcan's gaze shifted in his direction, and mild confusion was apparent on his face. "Captain…Doctor." He paused, perhaps gathering his thoughts as he adjusted to consciousness.

"I do not precisely believe in an afterlife, though if I did I suppose that the two of you, as the most constant fixtures in my physical life, would be logical possibilities for figures in what might come after. That is, if whatever being or beings that might be instrumental in creating such a post-reality wished to create one that would be not-unpleasant, for me."

His gaze flickered up to the sickbay ceiling and then back to them again. "However, I seem to be in sickbay, and I must admit that I do not feel as perfectly well as one is usually led to believe one would in any positive version of an afterlife. Logic would therefore dictate that I am, in fact, quite alive." He paused again. "However, that fact does lead to some confusion."

"The Enterprise made it far enough away from the planet just in time, Spock," Jim said. He was grinning, trying very hard not to laugh at his first officer's exposition. "The signal to the devices was cut off. They opened on their own; we didn't even have to continue trying to remove them."

"You mean_ I_ didn't; _I _was one having to try to get through those things with a laser without cutting anything else off," McCoy corrected testily.

"Of course, Doctor," Kirk shrugged.

Bones ignored him. "Though now I'm more interested in the idea that my being a usual fixture in your eternal afterlife wouldn't be entirely unpleasant, Mr. Spock. Would you care to explain that?"

"I merely meant, Doctor, that our discourse has now become commonplace. Any realistic reconstruction of my current day-to-day life would not be complete without some facsimile of you."

"Sure that's all you meant," McCoy answered, almost smiling.

"All right, you two. Spock, how are you feeling?" Jim asked.

"Physically, of course," Bones added. "We know better than to assume you're feeling anything else."

"Thank you," the Vulcan agreed. "I am, as I had to admit, not at full strength, but I do not seem to be damaged. I should be able to return to duty in a timely manner." With that he started to try to sit up, and this time it was both McCoy _and_ Kirk who put a hand on his shoulder and arm, respectively, to stop him.

Bones was the one to speak. "Oh I don't think so, Mr. Spock. You're staying right where you are for at least two or three days, and you're not going to get anywhere _near_ duty for at least a week."

While he said this Spock was already dropping carefully back onto his pillow, apparently not even able to get his elbows under him and/or keep them there. The Vulcan was frowning now, and as he settled on his back again his eyebrows went up. "I…I do not seem to be in a position to argue at this time."

"Damn right you're not."

"It's all right, Spock," Jim told him. "We'll get along without you until you've fully recovered. Take whatever time you need, and please do listen to Doctor McCoy. You have a nasty habit of ignoring his advice."

"Only when it is illogical, Captain."

"Certainly, but this time I want you to listen whether you think what he tells you logical or not. I'll make it an order if I have to."

"Captain?"

Jim leaned a little closer to make sure he was heard. "You need to rest, Mr. Spock. There wasn't time to let you have it after Deneva with the efforts to put the colony back in order, and it wasn't really rest you had when you were off duty those days last month shortly after that. We both know why; I don't need to spell it out. Right now we _do_ have the time and lack of crisis needed to allow you the rest, and you're going to take it. Is that clear?"

"Captain, I am a Vulcan; that isn't necessary. As soon as I am strong enough for duty, I—"

"No argument, Mister. I _said_, am I clear?"

Spock hesitated a moment, studying him, but finally he nodded once. "Yes, Captain."

"If it makes you feel any better, the doc's still got _me_ on half duty for another day or two, and I wasn't even hurt."

"I do not need to 'feel any better,' Jim, but I do appreciate the offering of that information." At saying it Spock gave him that look that was the closest he ever came to a smile, and Jim chuckled.

_He _felt better now, at least. "You're welcome. "

Bones pulled him away, back to his office, telling Spock to be quiet now and rest. The Vulcan didn't agree, but he didn't disagree, either. They left him where he was and retreated.

"Well you were right, Jim; he's not acting any different than he ever does."

"No…keep an eye on him, though."

"You know I will. I'm a doctor."

* * *

It took the two or three days in sickbay McCoy had insisted on for Spock to be able to even stand up and take a few steps on his own. It was disconcerting to watch, and Spock didn't seem happy about it himself. Still, the doctor continued to assure them that there was no damage—just severely weakened muscles and nerves, sapped from the prolonged violent stimulation.

Especially the last-ditch efforts of their captors to kill Spock when the three prisoners escaped the planet. That had done most of the work in taking his strength from him. Bones complained that if he could understand better how the devices worked that he could help Spock rebuild said strength faster, but at the same time he didn't seem to mind that for once the Vulcan was being forced to take a normal amount of time to recover.

"He ought to be reminded every now and again that he's only half-human," he said to Jim more than once, adapting the common phrase to his purpose. Jim, to some extent, agreed with the doctor, though it pained him to see his friend so frustrated at his condition.

Not that Spock allowed any such frustration to show, of course. Jim could simply tell because he knew him.

On the third day since he'd woken the Vulcan managed to convince Doctor McCoy that he would be better off resting in his quarters, where there was quiet and privacy and space. As usual, his logic was perfect and unarguable. McCoy agreed, on the condition that Spock allowed someone to escort him to his quarters. He insisted that he could make it that far on his own just fine, Vulcan stamina and all of that, but Bones wasn't having any of it.

Jim found himself called down from the bridge just to bring Spock to his quarters, because after the argument they'd had over it the Vulcan would not allow the doctor to do it and McCoy didn't particularly want to, anyhow.

"Get him out of my sickbay, Jim. He's been stubborn and argumentative the entire time; we'll _all _be better off with him in his quarters."

Spock, of course, perched on the edge of his biobed, merely hiked an eyebrow.

The captain shook his head. "All right. Come on, Spock."

The Vulcan slid slowly from the bed and stood, and until they made it out into the corridor he was doing just fine. Jim stayed just beside him, ready to brace him if he needed it, but he was walking normally. It was wasn't until the main sickbay doors had closed behind them and they'd gone several more meters that he slowed and his knees started to go weak.

Jim got one of Spock's arms over his shoulders and bolstered him back up. He got the distinct impression that Spock wouldn't have made it even that far walking normally under his own power if he weren't trying to make a point to the doctor.

He kept that to himself, though.

"Okay, okay, whoa, are you all right, Spock?"

"I am, I merely…I am sorry, Captain; it appears I have not regained as much strength as I had believed…"

"It's fine, let's just get you to your quarters."

"Thank you, Captain."

Between himself and the wall they kept Spock up long enough to make it to the first offer's quarters, and thankfully it was an odd enough time of the afternoon that they didn't really run into anyone in the corridors.

By the time they made it there Spock was a bit out of breath, which was significant for a Vulcan.

"Desk, or what?"

"The desk will be sufficient."

Jim nodded and helped Spock to his desk chair. When he was sitting and Jim had released any hold on him he braced himself on the edge of the desk. He was trying to be subtle about it, but wasn't entirely successful.

Jim just looked at him for a moment, trying to decide whether to say something. "Spock, you're not…in pain, are you?"

Spock looked up, almost surprised. "No, Jim. I am in no pain. However, it is strange…as a Vulcan, my body should be recovering itself much more quickly than it is. Whatever our captors' devices did, precisely, it was quite effective—much more so than anything we have encountered in the past. It is…" He paused, searching for a neutral enough word. "Unsettling." Though he frowned even at that one.

After looking around for a moment Jim found another chair, and pulled it up to the opposite side of the desk and sat. "You were literally moments away from death, Spock. You couldn't expect anyone to simply bounce back from that...physically or otherwise." He resisted the knee-jerk reaction to wince at his own words; not exactly tactful, but how else was he supposed to broach such a subject to a Vulcan?

There went the eyebrow again.

"Are you suggesting something?"

"I don't know; am I?"

"You would be the one to know, Captain."

Jim let out a frustrated breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Spock, you were tortured, for lack of a better word, and you nearly_ died_. You were _convinced_ you were going to die. For most people that would be a traumatic experience."

"I am a Vulcan."

Jim shook his head. "I know that, I mean—never mind." It was too early. If there was anything to say Spock wasn't going to say it now. Kirk was quiet for a while, until he remembered the one serious question he had that Spock might actually answer.

"Spock…in sickbay after we were beamed up from the planet, and just before the devices deactivated…you were trying to induce a mind meld between us, am I correct?"

"You are."

"What were you trying to do?"

"It would have been important were I to have died; however, I did not. It is therefore no longer of any importance."

Jim just stared at him. "That's all I'm going to get?"

The Vulcan's expression softened at that. "I am sorry, Jim…if I were now dead and I had succeeded you would understand quite clearly. Since it became unnecessary, I cannot tell you anything more. It is too much of an internal Vulcan affair. I trust you can understand, after recent events."

The captain sighed. "I suppose I'll have to." After those recent events on Vulcan he certainly _wasn't_ going to pry. He'd learned quite enough then, thanks.

"I'm sorry," Spock said again. "I know that the attempt caused you pain."

Jim waved it off. "Never mind; it's all right. Certainly if it would have been that critical. I trust you." They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, and then he got to his feet. "Well, I suppose I should leave you to do the resting you apparently need. I wouldn't worry, Mr. Spock; simply because you're as susceptible to something as the rest of us for once doesn't mean there's anything otherwise wrong. You'll be back on the bridge soon enough."

"I do not need to remind you that I do not worry; I analyze."

Jim smiled a little at that before he left. If nothing else—even if it wasn't true—it was a very Spock response. After the past few days he needed that.

* * *

Spock had asked to be helped only to the desk to avoid arousing more concern than necessary from the captain, but once Jim was gone he could no longer ignore his exhaustion. At least, there was no logical reason why he should anymore; he was alone.

However, moving from the desk chair to the bed presented a problem. If it were not for the separating wall behind him that broke the sleeping area from the work area of his quarters he might have been in a bind, indeed. It was there though, and he made use of it to pull himself back to his feet and around to his bed. Half an hour ago he could have done at least that without aid, but the journey from sickbay had taken any strength he had regained.

Very, very unusual.

Perhaps, however, the possible problem would be better served by a mind refreshed by sleep. Spock contemplated meditation, decided that he should at least attempt, but drifted off before he could do so.

He did not wake until much later in the day, and as was usual since their rescue from the planet he woke with remnants of memories scattering to the back of his mind as he came to consciousness. They were not pleasant memories and he did not mind that most of them ran from him.

It would be better, really, if all of them did, but that wasn't the case. Some of them remained, stubbornly, clinging to the front of his mind no matter how long separated he was from the last time he had slept. And just now there was never much time between the instances in which he slept. That was unavoidable, and so were the dreams.

That was why he needed to meditate. If he could do that he could assimilate the memories from the planet properly, but as he was he couldn't remain conscious long enough while sitting or lying still to reach a meditative state. With that Spock remembered the question that had faced him before he slept, and he determined to get up. Surely Jim and the doctor were right; nothing was amiss. What would be?

It was easier to physically test himself here, without the concern of prying eyes. If he were going to fall he could do it, and get up again, and there was no fuss. If any of his human companions were here there would have been a fuss, and they were rather inefficient that way. What use was worry over such small things?

And he fell. Twenty-three times he attempted to cross his quarters without aid and on seventeen of them his legs dropped out from under him no matter how closely he focused on forcing them to stay straight. The pattern was more random than anything, with no clear curve of increase or decrease. The waves in which his flagging strength came and went followed no logic.

Spock was halfway across the working area of his quarters once more when the door opened and Doctor McCoy entered. He stopped just as quickly. "I'm sorry, I expected you to be asleep. I meant to take fresh readings and leave."

The Vulcan changed course for the desk; he could feel his legs becoming unsteady again. "It's quite all right, Doctor. Take any readings you wish."

"What are you doing up, anyway? What part of 'rest' didn't you understand?"

"If I am to return to full capacity as quickly as possible, then exercise is only logical." Spock stopped at the desk, the edge pressing into the side and back of his legs in an attempt to keep them steady without needing to sit.

"Not in your condition. Not yet. Later, certainly, but you're still much too weak for that."

"If I were human, perhaps, but—"

"Save it, Spock." McCoy waved at him impatiently. "Just have a seat and I'll be out of your hair in a minute."

He was going to have no choice but to sit in a moment or two. At McCoy's request he shifted around the corner of the desk and began to, but once his knees had begun to bend he no longer had control over his descent. Spock dropped into the chair rather abruptly, hands grasping out at whatever they could find in any normal being's response to falling. One of them caught the edge of his computer console and the doctor stepped in quickly and caught the other arm briefly.

It wasn't only his legs trembling now, either. It was almost imperceptible but his entire body was, and Spock knew immediately that McCoy, with his physician's observational skills, saw it.

"Damnit, Spock, you've overworked yourself already. What happened to telling Jim you'd listen to me for once?"

"I did rest, Doctor, for quite some time once I had arrived here."

"Not enough. Or at least you've been up too long at this point whether you got enough rest or not."

Spock had to relent to that. "So it would seem."

McCoy brought his tricorder up from his hip and removed the medical scanner. The Vulcan remained obligingly still as he was scanned, for he wanted to know the results just as much as the doctor did.

"Not much change…I was right; you should be in bed." The doctor proceeded to stare at him, and Spock raised an eyebrow.

"You mean for me to return there now, then?"

"Well I'm not leaving until you do, so you might want to consider it."

So it went for the two and a half days that followed. Jim and Doctor McCoy both checked on him several times a day, the doctor trying to keep him in bed and Jim acting as a more friendly foil. However, his condition continued not to improve much. Just when it seemed as if he might be stronger, he lost most of the ground he might have gained. By then he could traverse his quarters without difficulty, at the least, but he knew that if he were to try to go any much greater distance he would promptly collapse again.

Beyond that, the second day after being allowed to return to his quarters he began to manifest other symptoms beyond the exhaustion and physical depletion of energy. Nausea, dizziness, headaches, and a strange ache in his right wrist, among other things. Spock attributed them as side-effects to the weakness and supposed that perhaps his immune system's responses were low. Otherwise, as a Vulcan, he would not be susceptible to such symptoms. It was the only logical answer.

Except for the fact that nothing else about his physical condition was logical. He should be improving, not growing _more_ ill.

Spock did not tell the doctor _or_ the captain about the new symptoms. He was now able, at least, to attain the first levels of meditation—enough to contain the small physical symptoms, but not yet enough to deal with the new memories from the planet. The ones that needed to be dealt with.

It wore on him. He slept, but it was not restful. It sustained his body and scarcely even that, but not his mind. It was the headaches that were worst, of the symptoms he developed. His mind could not fully keep itself in repair without deeper meditation, which he couldn't achieve no matter how long he could stay awake, and the dreams continued.

A human would have called them nightmares, all if it negative experiences, all of it the memories from the planet and things his subconscious mind conjured up to go with them.

It _made no sense._ None of it did.

* * *

Jim knew Spock was confused and anxious and frustrated almost without the slight nudge of intuition that the failed mind meld had left him with. After the Vulcan had been back in his quarter for a couple of days or so Bones began to grow more concerned himself.

"He should be improving by now, even if he _were_ completely human. I don't understand it."

"I don't think he's feeling well, either," Jim agreed. "He hasn't eaten much." He and the doctor had been bring the first officer's meals to him when they checked on him, because they knew he would prefer for as few people as possible to see him in his current state. The trays they were picking up on subsequent visits were barely touched.

"I know. He hasn't said anything and I haven't had the heart to, either, but medical tricorders are called medical tricorders for a reason. He's having headaches, bouts of nausea and dizziness…like he's getting sick, but that doesn't make any sense. Vulcan's don't exactly get sick like we do. Not when it comes to typical germs and viruses. Alien ailments can affect them at times, sure, but Vulcans don't quite have an equivalent to the common cold."

The two of them were holed up in McCoy's office.

"He hasn't said anything about the new symptoms?"

"You know he wouldn't let me give him anything for them even if he did; maybe there's no_ logical_ reason to bring it up," Bones answered with no small amount of sarcasm. He crossed his arms and sat back in his chair. "Anyway, he doesn't actually talk to me much; has he said anything else to you?"

"No…not particularly. Usually if I'm there and he's not asking about ship's business we just get some chess in. I feel a bit guilty about that, too; I've been winning a lot more often than I usually do."

"Well I wouldn't blame him for being distracted."

Jim nodded absently. "Distracted…he certainly is that. I'll catch him staring off into space, or rubbing at his wrists. And he looks so tired, even with all of that sleep he's supposed to be getting. Something's wrong; I_ knew_ something was wrong, or would be…I wish I'd been wrong."

McCoy sighed. "You and me both; that means there are_ two_ problems. Whatever you're seeing, and whatever's going on medically. Tomorrow I have to tell him that he hasn't been getting away with anything and I need to take more blood samples to check for possible causes of these new symptoms."

"Good luck with that one." Jim slid from his perch on the edge of the desk. "I'm going to see him now. Maybe I can get him to eat something."

"You're the one who needs the luck, then."

When Spock answered the door chime and called for him to come in Jim found his first officer up and slowly pacing his quarters. The library computer was drawn up on his console, and Spock appeared deep in thought; he had that look on his face that usually indicated a focused attempt to solve a problem. Jim just watched him for a moment, watched him pace, pause, lean into the wall or the desk, and then pace more, pause again, lean…apparently his current solution to the weakness problem.

"Spock?"

The Vulcan looked up, his arms uncrossing, and as he dropped them Jim thought he saw them shaking a little before they were clasped behind his back.

"Captain."

"You can forego the formality, Spock, and please, _sit down_. You look awful. I can tell you that, can't I? Since you won't take offense."

There went an eyebrow, and there was that almost amused look.

"I appreciate honesty, in any case." He made it back to the desk on his own, though slowly, and sat down, and Jim glanced at the computer.

"So what are you up to?"

"I am…researching."

Jim just nodded. Then he had to say something. "Spock, Bones understands now that you're not recovering like you should. He's looking into it. We'll figure out what's going on, he'll come up with something like he always does, and you'll be fine."

He expected a much more wooden answer, as per usual, but instead Spock nodded wearily. "I hope that is the case."

Both of Jim's eyebrows went up, and a corner of his mouth quirked. "Hope, Spock? Isn't that an emotion?"

"It was merely the closest one-word approximation of my desire to return to duty that would fit within the context of the sentence."

It was a relatively inventive answer, with more than enough large words, so Jim gave him that one even though he knew it wasn't quite the truth. "All right."

McCoy, however, didn't turn up anything immediately with the blood tests, and once Spock knew for certain that they were aware of his other symptoms he admitted that they were growing worse.

Another two days, and by the end of his bridge shift on the second Jim had no desire to go his quarters or go to the gym or find dinner or even bother Bones.

He still hadn't told Spock about the remaining effects of the attempted mild meld because he had enough on his plate at the moment, but now he wondered if it could have anything to do with what was happening to his friend. Perhaps none of the side-effects were negative for Jim—just the memories and feeling left behind, and being able to tell more easily when Spock was covering emotions, or when something was wrong. But still, could the failed meld have caused Spock any harm? It wouldn't explain the physical problem of not being able to get his strength back, or that he was sick, but maybe it could be part of what was bothering the Vulcan otherwise.

Or not. But Jim needed to say something. He went straight from the bridge to his first officer's quarters.

There was no answer to the first few chimes, and Jim was close to waiting until a little later. Spock might be resting, and he wouldn't want to disturb him now if that were the case.

But then there was a voice, barely audible, Jim's name.

It didn't sound right, and something in his chest tightened, and inside he found Spock collapsed against the wall behind his desk. The chair was on its side. Jim punched the intercom and called for a medical team before hurrying to his friend's side.

"Spock! What happened?" He crouched and held his arm, and Spock was conscious, but barely.

"I do not know…I was…at the desk…now I am down here. I haven't been able to get up…dizzy…no strength. I feel…I feel quite ill."

The arm Jim was holding was shaking, and so was the other but the one Jim held was doing so more violently than the other. It was Spock's right arm, the wrist of which Jim had noticed his rubbing at much more often than the other. Or…no. No, it was just this one.

He'd thought it was a psychological thing, in response to the memories from the planet—something done absently. But now that he really thought about it, Vulcans didn't _do_ things absently. Not when they were in their right minds. And Spock, though he had to be hiding some distress over the whole incident, was otherwise well within his right mind.

And if he'd only been rubbing at this one…

Jim quickly held Spock's arm out enough to push the sleeve back from the inside of his wrist, remembering that it was the one that had been scratched when the metal rings released themselves.

_No. Not scratched. Bones told me later it was a small puncture wound—very small. It was still something that could have happened if there was a sharp edge somewhere, and he didn't think anything of it; just sealed it up, he said. _

_Oh god, what if—_

He pushed the blue fabric back and bit back a cry.

Though the tiny wound was no longer there, _something _was. Dark green veins were visible snaking from where it had been up Spock's arm.

"Spock, have you seen this? Your wrist, it's—" Jim traced the visible lines on Spock's skin up his arm until he couldn't push the sleeve up anymore, but then he caught sight of them on the back of his friend's neck disappearing under his hairline.

The lines on his arm could have been present for days, but _those _had not been there yesterday.

Spock grimaced briefly, which was another alarm in Jim's head. "Spock, what's wrong? What is this?"

"I don't know…I…only know that I am…I am ill, and the headaches…have taken a considerable turn for the worse…and I do not seem to be able to meditate to contain them or…any other symptoms any longer."

As he spoke his pauses for breath were sounding less like pauses and more like hitches in his breathing.

"Spock, are you having trouble breathing again?"

"I am beginning to…"

For a moment Spock's eyes were a bit wider, and Jim knew exactly what it was he saw in them no matter how well-veiled it was. He didn't only see it; he felt it in his gut.

It was fear.


	6. Chapter 6

So yeah...school. Ugh. Anyhoo, here this is. :) I hope ya"ll like it. Thanks so much for reading and reviewing! Couldn't do it without ya'll. :)

Chapter 6

"Hang on, Spock. Bones and a medical team are on their way."

Jim was still hanging on to his first officer's arm from examining it, but he sure as hell wasn't going to let go now. He stayed right where he was, at Spock's side, because what else was he supposed to do?

Spock was slipping quickly toward unconsciousness, but he was fighting it—something Jim was encouraging. He couldn't help but worry, as little as they knew about what was wrong, about what would happen if Spock did lose consciousness.

"I don't understand what is…it is not logical…" Spock said, but with fading clarity. His head moved suddenly, in the captain's direction, as if trying to focus on him but too close to senselessness to really see anymore. "Jim…"

It sounded for all the world like a plea, and Jim clamped his free hand on the Vulcan's shoulder. "I'm right here, Spock. I don't understand it, either, but we'll figure it out. We will."

Spock managed a small nod as his head fell back against the wall and his eyes closed. Jim tried to talk to him after that but there wasn't any answer. That, thank god, was when the door to the corridor opened again and Leonard McCoy barreled inside with a medical team behind him.

"What happened?" he demanded, spotting the two of them on the floor.

Jim held up the arm cradled in one of his to call attention to the worrying, spidery green lines. "I don't know. I haven't seen this before. What the hell is it, Bones?"

McCoy initially seemed as confused as he. "The blazes…?" He started a tricorder scan, but began shaking his head immediately.

"What?"

"Nothing. I'll have to recalibrate; obviously _something's _in his system, but whatever it is has gone undetected before now except for the symptoms. Under the radar somehow."

"Spock said he felt worse…you think whatever this is is was causing those symptoms to begin with? It's making him sick?"

"Has to be; there was nothing else that _would_ have been making him sick, unless it was the stress, but Vulcans aren't really the type for psychosomatic illness. Now this is here, and—"

Jim cut in, pointing out that the strange lines made their way up to Spock's neck and beyond.

"Damnit," Bones groused. "I knew he was getting sicker. I should have had him back in sickbay _yesterday_, but there's that damn Vulcan propriety of his and I didn't want to make him come back unless he absolutely had to—"

"Usually you're not much concerned about it."

"Well excuse me if I thought he'd been through enough already. He hates sickbay. Or whatever the blasted Vulcan equivalent of that is."

"Easy, Bones. I'm not blaming you. Just find out what's doing this to him."

"That would be the plan."

They got Spock back to sickbay immediately, but once again Jim found himself in the way. He was forced to spend several more lonely hours in the doctor's office, because he didn't want to leave this time, either. This time, though, he couldn't have fallen asleep if he wanted to. Though it was late by the time Bones tracked him down back there, he was wide awake and up and pacing for maybe the sixth or seventh separate time.

This time, when McCoy found him, the doctor did not look at all happy.

"Bones? What is it? What's happening to him?"

The doctor just shook his head. "We don't even know all of it and I don't like it, Jim."

"What is it? Those devices must have…"

"At least one of them injected some sort of toxin at the point on his wrist where we found the wound after they fell off. That's what's making him sick and keeping him from getting any stronger. What we don't understand is why or how."

Kirk frowned, trying to remember those awful several minutes in the surgical ward. "Just before those things came off his wrists, they grew dimmer. Like they were losing signal and they knew it. It must have been something they were programmed to do if they were about to lose contact. The loss of signal…triggered something. Either only one was supposed to inject, or that mechanism had already been damaged on the one you were trying to cut through."

"I'd had a few thoughts along those lines."

"We kept them, didn't we? In case we needed to examine them?"

"We did."

"A science team should be doing that."

Bones nodded. "I figured you'd say that; I've already got someone digging them out of storage."

"What about the toxin? Can you take care of it?"

"Jim, we don't know what it _is_. It didn't show up on any standard medical scans before now; we would never have found it if we hadn't known to look. We've found it now, but that's about it. I don't know if this is as sick as he'll be, or if it'll get worse, or even whether or not it has the potential to kill him."

The captain grimaced. "It certainly seemed like they wanted him dead when we escaped."

"True, but if they just wanted to make sure any escapee died, don't you think it would've been something a little more fast-acting?"

"Maybe. But they seemed very preoccupied with the subject of punishment," Jim remembered grimly.

"That could be a good thing, too. If that's what they were after when they programmed those bracelets, it might mean that's all this is and it's not a threat to Spock's life," Bones reminded him. He sounded hopeful, but then he let out a breath of frustration at his own meaningless hypothesizing. "But we don't know," he admitted. "And that's not the worst of it, Jim. It isn't the toxin that left those marks on him. It's not even the real problem."

Kirk's gaze snapped back up quickly. "What? What do you mean?"

McCoy went to the computer terminal on his desk and called up scan images. "Look at this."

There was a scan of Spock's brain on the screen, but there seemed to be a strange haze over it. "I don't understand, Bones."

The doctor pointed at the image, especially indicating the areas where the unidentified effect seemed thickest. "What you're seeing here? Nanoprobes. An army of them that've made camp in his brain."

"Nanoprobes? You mean, like microscopic medical machines?"

"Basically. Very similar to technology used on late twenty-first century Earth before the rise of safer technologies like the dermal regenerator. Research for them was abandoned then—it never went any farther. On Earth, anyway. These…we don't know much about them yet from the few scans we've gotten, but we know they're more sophisticated than anything Earth ever had."

Jim swallowed. "What are they doing in there? What about the markings?"

"They were injected with the toxin, and the path they took to his brain left those marks. They were only irritated veins; nothing more. We've already taken care of that. The problem is that these probes are_ in his brain_. And they may not being doing much yet, but they way they're positioning themselves they could really do anything they wanted if we don't get them out. But we don't have an immediate safe way to do that.

Very slowly, Jim sat down again, on the edge of the desk. "Like what?" he asked warily. "What could they do?"

"They're in his brain! They could do anything. They could kill him right this very second if that's what they were programmed to do. And they have the gall to brag about it. Some sort of low-level field they were generating was protecting them from scans, and it's not that we cut through it. They just stopped giving it off—as if maybe they were vulnerable while they were traveling through his bloodstream, but now that they've set up shop…"

The longer McCoy talked, the more worried he sounded. "They could do anything, Jim. They could control him, they could make him sicker than he already is…they could cause him more pain than he ever felt while we were on that planet if they have a mind to. They could turn him into a vegetable, or like I said—they could just kill him. And the only ones that seem active at all right now, where they are…I think they've already begun to disrupt his mental abilities. His telepathy. His control."

"Oh god…" Jim scowled. "He did seem confused before he lost consciousness. He...well I didn't really want to think about it, Bones, but he really looked _scared_ for a moment there."

"I don't doubt it. He may be worse when he wakes up," the doctor said gently. "We won't know until he does." McCoy flipped through a few more images, but Jim wasn't really looking at them. He wasn't really looking at anything.

"A few of them had already started to screw with his respiratory system, too," McCoy was grumbling.

Jim chewed on the inside of his lip. "I noticed. That hitching had started up again." He frowned. "What cause that the first time, then? When it started on the planet? He wouldn't have been injected with anything by that point."

Bones dropped into his desk chair. "_That _was just the ridiculous amount of physical and neural stress he was under at the time because of the pain. _Now_ it's because those things are in his brain disrupting signals and causing erratic function. Some of the symptoms they're causing I can combat, though, and that's one of them for now, thank god. I've got him breathing all right now."

Both of them sat in silence for a while after that. Jim was still trying to grasp the gravity of the situation.

That his first officer was now at the mercy of these…these machines, because their captors couldn't just let their prisoners go.

It was all pointless, meaningless. Despite their seemingly innocuous purpose in being there, the aliens on the world they'd been imprisoned on—that they had never even seen—were more brutal and cruel than Jim ever could have imagined. Whether their devices were now meant to kill his first officer or not, that was still true. There was no purpose in any of this, and his stomach churned with the feeling of helplessness.

"My god, Bones, what are we going to do?"

McCoy didn't quite look at him, and since he wasn't one to be shy Jim knew that didn't bode well. "_I_ might suggest prayer. And not just because I'm an old country doctor, either—we'll need it find an answer, and doubly so to make sure he stays alive long enough for us to do that."

Back to square one, then.

_No panicking. No panicking. Wouldn't be very becoming for a captain, would it? Spock's made it through worse. _There was doubt in the back of his mind, though. _Has he really? Has it ever really been quite this dire?_

At least not since Jim had taken command of Enterprise, it hadn't. Not really.

How was Spock going to react? Having something alien inside you that could do anything to you it wanted was horrific enough an experience once. This, though, wasn't the first time. It was far too much like what had happened at Deneva for comfort, and this time, if Bones was right, Spock might be stripped of his mental control along with whatever else was done to him before they could fix it.

No suffering in silence this time. No pretending nothing was wrong.

If Spock were human that might have been a good thing, that he might be robbed of his ability to bottle things up this time around. It was better for a human not to do that. But Spock wasn't entirely human. He was also very much a Vulcan.

"How soon can we get him back to his quarters?" Jim asked at length.

"What are you talking about? We can't. We need him here so we can be sure we're doing everything we can."

"You can't just take the samples and readings you need and—? I understand how serious this is, Bones, but if these things are doing what you think they're doing to him, he isn't going to want anyone to see him like that. He was horrified enough about the one time he shouted at Nurse Chapel a few weeks ago. He stayed in his quarters until we made it to Vulcan for a reason; he didn't want the crew to see him compromised." He made a face. "Granted, there was also the part where he might have been a danger to them in that state, and this isn't quite like _that_, but you know what I mean."

Bones nodded wearily. "I know what you mean. But giving him a room to himself here is the best I can do now, Jim. With those machines up there there's no telling what could happen, at any time. He has a better chance if he stays here, as close to anything we can do for him as possible."

"Sickbay doesn't have any private rooms—except for the medical isolation chambers, and those tiny sterile things…"

"I've already got my staff rigging up one of the smaller labs we're not using—taking out the extra equipment, moving a biobed and monitoring equipment in. It'll be as comfortable as we can make it, and he'll have as much privacy as we can give him as long as he's stuck in here, but…"

The doctor spread his hands helplessly, but Jim managed a small bark of warm laughter despite himself.

"No, Bones, it's all right…that's good. It's good. It's a lot better than nothing." McCoy tried to pretend he didn't care about their Vulcan first officer as much as he did, but Jim had long since been able to see right through him.

"I try."

Jim squeezed his friend's shoulder for a moment and nodded in understanding.

"When should he come around?" the captain asked then.

"Any time now."

"We should be in there, then."

Bones nodded and rose to follow him.

* * *

Spock was not at all surprised to wake in sickbay again, nor was he surprised to find the captain and Doctor McCoy hovering near his bed when he woke. They both seemed very concerned, and from what he could remember of the last twelve hours or so he supposed they had a right to be. He would like to know what was happening just as much as he was certain they did.

It seemed, however, that there was already an answer—or part of one—but the doctor did not seem eager to explain. It took prodding to get him to do so, and Spock told himself that he did not prod because he was anxious. The banter was simply an illogical waste of time.

There was also the fact that physically he felt quite feverish and weak—a disturbing feeling, for him, as Vulcans did not usually take ill—and he was not certain how long he could adequately focus on the doctor's explanation whenever he chose to give it. Thus it was logical to encourage him to begin as soon as possible, to ensure Spock would understand what he was being told. He wouldn't if he were to lose consciousness again or become too insensate to listen.

It was strange to need to consider such things, but he had no choice. He had not meditated in any capacity for more than two days, because he could not. Even the few brief days since their rescue from the planet that he had been able to gain some level of meditation, it had not been much, or deep. Without the refresh of meditation his other mental disciplines were slipping, and any abilities he might otherwise have in that sense were therefore nonoperational or becoming so.

"Doctor, please, if any answers have been forthcoming I would request that you convey them." It was the third time since waking that he had made such a request. Whereas before the captain and doctor had only exchanged uneasy glances, this time McCoy gave in with a huff of frustration.

"Fine! You want to know what's wrong with you so damned badly, I'll tell you!" But then he sighed, and any anger was soon gone as he began to explain Spock's situation to him.

It was ironic, how similar it all was to what had happened to him at Deneva. That was not lost on him. The fact that it was now microscopic machines in his brain rather than alien neural tissue twined throughout his body did not make much effective difference.

At least this time the entity or entities within him were not attempting to force him to be a danger to the ship and its crew. It gave him some small comfort.

Still, with his control weak…Spock felt the fear and helplessness, and he could not deny that he did. He had the completely illogical sensation of a cold hand closing in a vice-grip around his chest. He remained as controlled without as he ever did—that, at least, had not (yet?) been taken from him—but the captain was a remarkably sensitive man.

Spock lay propped against pillows that had been positioned behind him once he woke, silently listening. Somehow, though, Jim knew something, or saw something. Approximately halfway through the doctor's exposition, as Spock began to understand the depth of the matter, Jim moved a bit closer to the bedside. He was nearly brushing his first officer's shoulder. He rested a hand lightly on that shoulder and kept it there.

In any other situation Spock would have allowed it for a moderate length of time, and then found some polite way to extricate himself if the contact continued. On the planet, conversely, he had not had a choice but to allow it to continue; he had needed the physical support or had been too withdrawn from the pain to realize, entirely, that it was still there in those cases.

At the moment, as in any usual situation, he did have a choice. Still, he didn't seek to somehow discontinue the contact. Reluctantly he realized that he did not want to.

"Spock? Are you all right?"

Jim's voice broke into his consciousness, and Spock realized that the doctor's explanation was over. He remembered all of it, of course, as a Vulcan, but the rest of him still felt strangely as if he had gone through the past several minutes in a strange haze.

"I understand my position, if that is what you are inquiring." His voice still sounded rough and weak, not much better than it had when Jim had found him. He did not like it.

The captain, who had asked the question, shook his head and let his hand fall from Spock's shoulder. "I don't know what I'm inquiring." He appeared quite at a loss, and…at the moment, Spock could not blame him.

The doctor spoke again at length, though he seemed hesitant to do so. "The first order of business will be to take a sample of those probes—your room should be ready by then, and we can get you moved into it. Like I said, I'm afraid I can't let you go back to your quarters. Not this time; the situation is too sensitive."

Spock nodded once. "I understand, doctor."

He also understood why they were preparing a room for him here, beyond the fact that they wished to give him the best possible chance of surviving. However, none of them said it and Spock was grateful for that.

He was also grateful that they were doing it, because he knew they were likely right. If the toxins and other actions of the probes continued to break down his mental barriers, if they continued to weaken the area of his brain that allowed him to construct them…

It occurred to him that they could not possibly have been programmed, specifically, for his species. If so, what they were doing would be, logically, only a first step meant to make the remainder of the process—whatever it was, whether a journey to death or not—a worse experience for the victim from the beginning no matter the species. Such a step would not have taken long in most humans, with what comparatively little mental defenses they had.

It was another small consolation, that with him these devices were having so much trouble even beginning to carry out whatever programming they might have.

"We'll take the samples in the morning. For now, both you and the captain are in need of sleep." The doctor looked pointedly at Jim, who rolled his eyes.

"All right, Bones, all right…"

And then both of them just stood there.

"Captain? Doctor?"

They were both shifting uncomfortably, worriedly.

"Spock…" Jim began. But he stopped.

Spock understood, too, that in a way this was more dire than Deneva. The neural parasites had wanted their victims alive to do their bidding, but the programmed will of these machines was unknown. Feasibly, it was possible now that any moment until they could be removed or deactivated might be Spock's last.

But Spock knew as he watched these friends who cared for him that it was not death itself that concerned him.

"Jim."

It took only that. The captain relaxed visibly, and nodded, as if to say that he knew everything would be all right.

Human body language and the things they conveyed with it were often illogical, but Spock had come to be able to read them easily enough in most circumstances. It was easier, too, to do it in people he was closer to. That was why Spock understood; he could not think of any human that he had ever been closer to in friendship than Jim Kirk.

"I'll be back as soon as my shift is finished tomorrow, if I'm not back in the morning," Jim said then. He looked at the doctor. "Keep me informed."

"Go to bed, Jim." McCoy looked at Spock next. "You too."

Spock did not protest. He could feel himself tiring again already. He had not been able to get up from the floor in his quarters after he'd fallen, and he could scarcely sit up now; that much had been proven when he woke and attempted to.

At least they had let him try unhindered this time.

Anyhow, all strength he had begun to regain was gone now that the probes were working. If he recalled the doctor's explanations correctly, it was the disguised toxins they had released upon injection that had prevented him from progressing any farther than he had until now. Now even that was moot.

Spock attempted to take a deep breath, and found himself coughing and then having difficulty taking in enough air to bring it to a stop. The captain, who had been turning to go, spun back to them.

McCoy reached for his patient with one hand and waved at Jim with the other. "It's all right; he just needs another dose of what I'm using to keep his breathing steady. He'll be all right." The captain stayed frozen in the doorway to the ward anyhow, until the doctor had quickly gone for a hypospray and injected it. "There. Better?"

Breathing was immediately easier, flowed more normally, and Spock nodded. "Thank you, doctor."

McCoy snorted. "Better watch yourself; go too long without smart-mouthing me and I'll start worrying." The statement, of course, was not logical; Spock knew the doctor was _already _worried.

Sarcasm then. Of course. How could he have forgotten? He was tired. He felt the drag of exhaustion and sickness. He could breathe easily enough, but his head ached—his whole body did, really—and the fever and nausea remained. If he were any more upright he would have been dizzy as well. All of it the same as the past few days, but more pronounced now. Apparently these symptoms persisted even beyond whatever other concoctions the doctor had seen fit to inject him with before he woke, and with Federation medical technology what it was that did not bode well. Such simple symptoms could usually be eradicated easily.

"I apologize that I disappoint."

The doctor smiled somewhat, seemingly comforted by the mild retort. It seemed to put the captain at ease again as well, and he left as he'd meant to.

Soon enough Spock was left alone with his thoughts, but tonight it was not somewhere that he wished to be.

The situation was quickly rectified as the darkness pulled him under once more.

* * *

In the morning Doctor McCoy explained that the simplest way to get at any of the probes was to extract them via the base of his skull. Some of them had clustered there, around his spinal cord. While the fact that any of them were precisely there at all was worrying to the doctor, it prevented the need for surgery just to get a sample of the things. Seeing as he was in a great deal of danger either way, Spock considered it fortunate that the procedure would instead be relatively simple.

That was how he found himself face down on a table in the surgical ward, somewhat sedated to be certain he remained still, but not unconscious. There was no need for him to be unconscious. The extraction would not take long, and he had been told that while there might be some discomfort it should not be painful. Such claims, when doctors made them, were usually quite untrue, but it did not matter. It was necessary.

Spock remained still when he was asked, and felt the uncomfortable pressure where he had expected to feel it. For a moment, that was all he felt, and he thought that perhaps the doctor had been correct.

Then his head blossomed in sudden pain, blinding pain. Spock heard himself shout and felt himself press involuntarily into the table under him to keep from moving—to keep the doctor's effort from going wasted.

He heard swearing above him.

"Damnit! Nurse, get some more help in here! We have to get this sample and if he starts moving—"

"Yes, Doctor."

The pain grew worse as McCoy continued to attempt to take the sample he needed. The probes were retaliating. They did not wish for any of them to be removed. The pain spread, searing his nerves as it had on the planet. Spock tried not to move, but when the orderlies that followed Nurse Chapel back arrived, they were needed. He was gasping, and he couldn't control it. He cried out again.

It was supposed to be over. There wasn't supposed to be any more pain, but now…

He had thought that perhaps the illness was what they were meant to deliver, and that perhaps it was not pain that they were meant for as the metal rings had been. Illogical, of course. Why would they colonize his brain if the toxin, which had already been released, was their only purpose? He had not thought it, he knew now; he had hoped it, and that was a very different thing.

"I've almost got it, Spock, just a few more seconds," McCoy told him. Anxiety was clear in his voice.

And then the pressure was gone, and with it went the pain. His head still pounded mercilessly, but that was manageable even by human standards…and it would have to be. Human pain management levels were very nearly all he had remaining to him.

"Spock?" There were hands on his shoulders, prodding him to turn over and offering to help. "Are you all right?"

Spock allowed the doctor to help him in turning over onto his back, even as he attempted to catch his breath and to still his now-trembling hands. It was difficult.

"Are you all right?" McCoy repeated, a little more demanding this time.

"I am…the pain has ceased."

"Ceased, or you're using your tricks on it?" the doctor asked skeptically.

Spock's eyebrows went up, and he wasn't quite looking at McCoy. "I have no…'tricks' left, Doctor," he said quietly.

He did not realize until he said it that his eyes were not quite dry, and that something inside him trembled as surely as his hands did.

* * *

"How is he?"

The captain stood in McCoy's office doorway, and the doctor sighed and got to his feet.

"I don't know, Jim. The other symptoms are getting worse—harder to counteract. Other than that I couldn't tell you. He hasn't said a word since we took the samples this morning." Bones winced. "Then again, it didn't exactly go well."

"What happened?"

McCoy told him, and Jim wanted to know why he hadn't been called immediately.

"It was over as soon as it started, and there wasn't any more pain after we had the sample. They just tried to keep us from getting it, is all."

"But they can do that to him. Now we know for sure," Jim grimaced. "Damn."

Bones nodded slowly. "And I don't think he realized just what all of this meant until it happened. Hell, maybe even _I_ didn't." He passed the captain and led him back in the direction of the labs and other sickbay sections, presumably leading him to the room they had given Jim's first officer.

"I keep wondering what's going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and then I tell myself he's a Vulcan, I shouldn't worry like that—shouldn't get over-dramatic about it. Then I remember he's human, too, and I don't know what to think anymore," McCoy was saying as they went.

Jim couldn't help but understand what he meant, and when the door to the small room opened he saw it. He saw Spock, still in his bed and staring blankly at the ceiling. The blanket had slipped down somewhere between his chest and his waist. There was a thin sheen of sweat visible on his forehead. Jim exchanged a worried glance with Bones.

"Like I said, he's been like that most of the day."

Jim nodded and swallowed a little, and McCoy moved on and let him go in alone. The door closed behind him and he made his way to the stool that was already by the head of the bed.

He wondered if Bones had been in here earlier. Nurse Chapel or whoever else was looking after him was more likely, but then again Bones had been rather protective of their Vulcan lately. Jim didn't blame him.

Jim sat in silence at first, and Spock didn't seem to notice him. But no matter how sick he was still Spock, and Jim knew he knew who was beside him.

"Fear is a perfectly normal emotion, you know. It doesn't mean you're weak, either." There wasn't any answer. "Anyone would be afraid in your situation. Most people wouldn't handle it very well at all; certainly not as well as you."

Still no answer.

Jim sighed. "Spock…" He had to say his friend's name once or twice more to get any reaction at all, much less an actual answer. Finally there was one.

"I do not wish to be afraid…and yet I…am."

"That's part of what it is to have emotions, Spock. It means we don't usually get to choose them."

"It is...inconvenient."

Jim shrugged. "Yes, it is. But it's human. Nothing more, nothing less. It's what we are."

Spock finally looked at him, hesitantly, tired eyes pleading in a way Jim wasn't used to from his first officer. It made his stomach clench, and he knew they had been right to make certain that Spock would have his privacy here. His emotional control already waning fast.

"I remember the pain, and I don't want to experience it again. Nor do I wish to die. I have been willing to die, in the line of duty. I would still do so. It would be logical. This…" Spock shook his head and frowned. "_This_ is not logical. It serves no purpose."

"I know," Jim said quickly. "I know it doesn't make any sense. No one wants to die for no reason. You're not going to."

"You cannot be certain of that."

Jim huffed. "Fine. I can't. But I know we're going to do everything in our power to _make_ it a certainty."

"I am certain that you will." Then the Vulcan's expression softened, and he focused on the captain more clearly. "Thank you, Jim…even if it is not enough."

It was a rather emotional statement, even if his voice didn't convey much. Jim wanted to reach out to him again, as he had yesterday, just a hand on his shoulder, anything…but he wasn't sure he should. Spock was teetering on the edge of control, and any further intent contact with his emotional friends might only make it worse. Might push him over into the chaos that was coming—that Spock feared.

So he didn't. Not now. But they had known each other long enough that the small nod of understanding he gave his first officer was enough.

Their efforts to save him would be enough, too, Jim told himself. They had to be.


	7. Chapter 7

Merry Christmas everybody! Sorry it's been a little while, end of semester, vacation beginning, bla ba etc. :P Anyway, I hope you're all having a great holiday! (and are still around, lol)

Chapter 7

Spock was finally drifting off into a restless sleep not long after Jim had come to sit with him, and when the captain reported back to McCoy's office Bones seemed glad of it.

"Good; he's been awake all day, and he needs as must rest as he can get if he's even going to _begin_ to fight off this toxin. I can only do so much right now without knowing what it is." McCoy paused. "So he talked to you? How was he?"

Jim winced. "I wasn't seeing things before. He's…he's afraid, Bones. Anyone would be in his situation; it's just we're not used to Spock being the type to admit it. It's not easy to see him like that."

"It's going to get worse before it gets better." The rest of that statement hung silently between them: _IF it gets better. IF we can solve this._

"I know," Jim sighed.

"We're doing everything we can, Jim. I've got a nurse right outside his door at all times. I'd feel better if someone were_ in_ there, but…that would defeat the purpose of giving him his privacy. And the monitors are wired directly to my office here; if anything out of ordinary happens, I'll know immediately. That's why he's here."

Jim just nodded at first, agreeing with the arrangements, but then he paused. "It would be all right if it was someone he knew in there with him. I know he doesn't mind you or me. Couldn't we do that? It would be better if someone were with him; you said it yourself."

"Of course it would be, but we can't keep up a twenty-four hour watch between the two of us. I'd do it if we could, but—"

"What about the other people he trusts? Uhura, Scotty…Sulu and Chekov if it comes to that, but one or two more ought to be enough. I'm sure they'd all be willing."

"I'm sure they would, Jim, but do you really think Spock would be all right with them seeing him like this?"

Jim let out a breath. "As long as it's not the entire crew…as long as he's not out in the open…that's what we were trying to avoid, and we've done that." He shook his head. "I just don't want anything to happen to him, Bones. We need him. And I don't want him to be alone. He was glad we were there on the planet, and I know he needs us now. I can't ignore that."

Bones studied him for a long moment, and finally agreed. "All right. If you think it'll help and he won't toss them out. Or us."

Jim felt in his mind, along the fading remains of the connection forged in the failed mind meld, and he was sure. "He won't. Not now."

"You're sure, aren't you?"

The captain shrugged and motioned to his head. "It's still there. Some of it. It's fainter…but it's there."

"And you still haven't mentioned it?"

"It seems to be going away on its own; I didn't see a reason to. I'm sure as hell not going to bother him about it now. It seems to be helping at the moment, anyway." He stood. "Anyway, we can talk to Uhura tomorrow—just start with her, I suppose. You're probably right that we should keep it to as few of us as possible. But I can stay with him tonight."

"Not _all_ night. You have to be on the bridge in the morning. I'll get to bed early and trade out with you halfway through or so."

Jim smiled. "All right…thanks, Bones."

He only went to his quarters long enough to get some dinner and find something to read. He didn't want to turn the lights up in Spock's sickbay room and bother him while he slept, so though he preferred real books he took a PADD for the lighted screen. By the time he returned a portable medical cot had been set up in Spock's room against a wall off to the left, barely out of the way in the small space. But it was a better place to sit for an extended period of time than the stool.

He still sat on the stool for a while, keeping watch over his first officer. It seemed that in his sleep it was more difficult to keep his breathing straightened out, and Jim conferred with McCoy before the doctor left. Bones gave the Vulcan another small dose of medication to help, and that seemed to do it.

Jim wondered how long such remedies _would_ help. He hoped Spock wouldn't be on a respirator before the end of this.

Still, it was reassuring after that, to watch the Vulcan sleep for a while. With breathing easier he wasn't as restless; he seemed much more peaceful sleeping than he had been merely an hour or two ago, anxious and staring at the ceiling.

Eventually Jim moved to the cot, and read one of the books loaded onto his PADD to keep himself awake. It wasn't easy to focus on it, but it was better than sitting, doing nothing, and returning to worrying as he knew he would if he didn't distract himself.

It started an hour before Bones was supposed to relieve him. Jim was just beginning to doze off where he sat on the cot against the wall. He was trying to blink himself awake again when Spock stirred in his sleep. Jim wasn't immediately worried, as he had already done this a few times and then settled again. Now though, as the Vulcan shifted he began to make a small sound akin to whimpering.

Jim frowned and got to his feet to go to the edge of the bed. He didn't say anything yet, not wanting to disturb his friend's rest if it was only a fading dream. But the whimpering continued, and he wondered if it were more serious than that.

"Spock?" he whispered. He reached out to the Vulcan's arms in the dimness. "Spock, are you all right? Spock…it's a dream. Wake up." He'd only shaken him once when Spock awoke with a small gasp and tried to sit up. Jim still held onto his arms. "Take it easy. It's all right."

Spock still didn't seem aware that he was there. "No," he gasped.

"Spock, it's _me_. It's Jim. You're all right! It was a dream."

Jim shook him again, gently, and finally the Vulcan looked at him and seemed to register his presence. His hands gripped the captain's arms in return. But then he grimaced. He gasped again, and this time Jim realized that it was a pained sound. Spock was shaking his head.

"Not…it is not a dream." He gave a small cry and started to curl in on himself. The hands on Jim's arms squeezed as if he were a lifeline. "Jim—!"

_No no no, not now. _

There was no attempt to control the pain. Spock had no mental defenses left. He had more personal control than a human even without his mental abilities, but that was all. Right now the pain was still hitting him just as hard as it would have any human, and Jim's stomach twisted.

"I'm right here, Spock. I'm not going anywhere."

The Vulcan didn't seem capable of really answering him anymore. He was curled and moaning, and Jim couldn't help but flash back to that terrifying first moment on the planet when Bones started screaming. His only comfort was the fact that Spock _wasn't_ screaming, which meant that the pain couldn't be quite as awful as it had been on the planet. With his defenses gone he would be if it was.

"Spock? Spock! Would a tranquilizer help? Anything? Spock!"

He knew the answer. Of course it wouldn't. They had hardly helped the victims of Deneva, and the probes causing Spock's pain now were directly in his brain. Nothing would stop that.

_What am I supposed to do?_

The gnawing in his stomach was back—the helplessness. Jim swallowed hard and stood where he was, still holding Spock's arms while the Vulcan squeezed his. When Spock shouted the night-shift nurse from outside the door ran in, but when the captain asked her if there were anything they could do, just to be sure, she told him apologetically that there wasn't. They could _try_ a tranquilizer, and that was what the doctor had instructed her to do if something like this were to happen, but…

Fine. Try it then, Jim told her. Anything, damnit. She didn't have to fetch it; there was already a tray of hyposprays resting on a console, ready if needed. She injected it quickly, and Jim thanked her and waved her away.

Spock calmed some, but he was still in pain, and Jim didn't know what else to do. Out of options, he climbed up onto the head of the biobed to sit and gathered his friend up against his shoulder. It was then he realized, feeling it against his chest, that his first officer was shaking.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."

His only answers were Spock's quiet moans, and he didn't know if the Vulcan had heard him at all.

* * *

When Jim opened his eyes it wasn't as dim in the room anymore. That told him that ship's night was coming to an end, and he wondered where McCoy was.

He tried to look around but his back and neck were stiff from the sitting position he'd fallen asleep in. He didn't really mind; he remembered, vaguely, that the pain had eventually stopped and Spock had fallen asleep again, and he hadn't wanted to move and disturb him. His first officer was still resting against his shoulder.

"Over here, Jim," Bones said quietly.

The captain glanced back and found the doctor on the cot holding the PADD he'd discarded. "Bones?"

"You were both asleep when I got here; I figured I'd let you get the rest. I doubted you'd go back to sleep if I woke you to send you back to your quarters." He made a face. "The nurse told me what happened."

Jim swallowed. "It was a nightmare," he admitted quietly. Not as bad as he'd been afraid it could have been, no, but not pleasant anyhow.

McCoy got up and came to help him hold Spock up while he climbed off the bed. They lowered the Vulcan back to the pillows, and he didn't stir.

"Took a lot out of him…he's still a rock," Jim muttered unhappily.

"I know. Go on, Jim; I'll watch him. You've got just enough time to shower before alpha shift."

He nodded. "And I'll talk to Uhura today—probably Scotty too." He looked at his unmoving first officer worriedly. "I certainly don't want him left alone after that. It could happen again."

* * *

When Spock woke again he knew it was early morning, though he was not certain of the exact hour. His usually impeccable internal sense of time was not as accurate as it could have been just now, in his illness.

And he was still ill. The nausea, dizziness, and uneasiness in his stomach, among other things, had not subsided. If he were correct, he was effectively 'back to square one' as Jim or the doctor might have put it. He was in even worse a condition, in fact, than he had been when he first woke back aboard the ship. Now, as then, he did not think he would have the strength to so much as sit up on his own. Then, however, he had not yet been sick. The toxin had not fully taken effect.

He tried, to see how much he could move. He could turn over and he could shove an elbow under him to get a bit of leverage, but that was the farthest he could go. He relaxed into the biobed again and let out a small breath.

"Good, now don't go trying that again. It's better if you rest."

Spock looked up quickly, startled, to find that Doctor McCoy had come to his bedside. The surprise must have shown on his face, because McCoy quickly explained.

"Sorry, I was sitting over there."

Spock glanced back as far as he could, and from the corner of an eye saw the cot against the wall. He felt momentary shame for the obvious reaction to his surprise—and still more when he remembered what he could remember of the night before—but he was far too tired to feel it for long. He had to remember that it was not a fault of his. It was not pleasant to be losing control of his emotions, but it was being forced on him.

"The captain…" Spock began quietly.

"He's gone to prepare for the first shift."

"I trust he slept at least a moderate amount of time." Concern. He was feeling it for Jim, for how worried his friend must be…and perhaps it was not something alien to him, at least when it came to his closest companions, but it was not something he usually admitted to himself.

McCoy smiled a little. "Don't worry; he did. He's all right." It seemed there was something the doctor was not saying, but if he did not wish to reveal it he would not, and it would not be logical to press him.

Well. Perhaps his emotions were beginning to grow out of check, but at least logic had not abandoned him completely.

"That is good to know." He took an uneven breath, and a sudden more intense wave of nausea and dizziness had him making something of a face before he could stop it.

"Spock? How are you feeling? The symptoms?"

"Elevated…at the moment. I am quite uncomfortable," the Vulcan admitted.

The doctor moved to the tray of hyposprays lying not far away, and came back after a moment with two of them. "It's time for your medication anyhow," he said, as he injected the two sprays. "Hopefully it'll help some, but I don't know how much longer I can promise they'll do anything at all."

"I understand…the cause of my condition is quite outside the realm of our experience and medical science. It is no fault of yours."

The symptoms did begin to abate again to some degree. He could see more clearly, breathe more easily, and focus and think a bit better after a moment. The nausea and queasiness were not gone, but lessened somewhat; not as much as the medication had caused them to subside yesterday, however.

McCoy just looked at him for a moment, squinting skeptically. "Are you all right, Spock? I know what happened last night. My staff has to report everything, and Jim said something anyway. He's worried about you. We were hoping that wasn't what these things meant to do to you…cause you pain again. But they did."

"And probably will again. I know that, Doctor." Spock spoke quickly, trying to cover the slight hitch in his breath then that had nothing to do with any difficulty.

The doctor didn't say anything about it, but he did close a hand reassuringly over the Vulcan's shoulder. "The science department is working around the clock on the samples of those probes we took, and I've got a team analyzing the toxin, too, for all the good that may do. Doctor M'Benga and I are supervising both efforts. We'll find a way to put a stop to all of this—get you well again."

"I know that you are all trying, Doctor, and I thank you. But there is no need to continually remind me. You will succeed, or you will not. Wishing will not change the eventual outcome."

McCoy's eyebrows went up. "You might try wishing sometime, Spock. It helps keep hope alive, and for us humans that's a good thing. I know you'd say _both_ aren't logical, but if this goes on much longer you might decide you could use them." His expression softened then, and he squeezed the Vulcan's shoulder gently. "Whether you do or not, you've got us."

Spock blinked once or twice, used to such admissions from Jim but not so much from the doctor.

He only nodded in thanks, afraid he might suffer another lapse of emotional control if he tried to answer aloud.

* * *

As soon as he made it to the bridge Jim quietly pulled Lieutenant Uhura aside to speak with her. She agreed immediately to help them, and he told her she would be released from duty after only two-thirds of her shift so that she could relieve Doctor McCoy in sickbay and spend most of the afternoon in there.

Jim would sleep some after his own shift, and then spend most of the night there. Bones would come in early the next morning to take his place. Most of the doctor's everyday duties could be delegated to the others doctors on staff. When he did have to leave Spock's room to oversee something to do with the efforts by the medical or science research teams or something else that required his specific attention, Nurse Chapel or Doctor M'Benga would step in while he had to be gone.

Hopefully, with that schedule rotating, they could keep Spock from being alone without bringing anyone else into it. It would be tiring, but they could do it; they would certainly still be better off than Spock himself, and he was the priority right now.

Jim thanked whatever space gods there were that there were no seriously pressing assignments that had to be taken care of just now. Charting and patrol, nothing more—quiet duty that did not require much of his personal attention as captain. It didn't require too much of any department, really. What needed to be done was getting done, and the teams studying the devices injected into his first officer were not bothered.

The crew deserved the relative quiet, after the hard two or three months they had been through before this. Shore leave should be coming soon enough, too, and Jim was glad of it.

If he got his way, shore leave would come soon and Spock would be fine, and it would bring extra time for his first officer to recover—at home on Vulcan, ideally. He needed a chance to return there under circumstances that were not so dire as they had been several weeks ago.

When Jim's shift was over he went to check in with the science teams before turning in for what sleep he was going to be able to get. He found Scotty with them, and while the engineer hadn't been specifically assigned there, there wasn't much else for him to do with their current duty schedule, anyhow. With light duty like this, the engines all but took care of themselves. Mr. Scott had complained in the past of boredom at times like this.

He certainly wasn't bored now.

"Well they're mechanical little beasties, sir, and I'm an engineer after all. Thought I might put myself to good use here," Scott told him.

One of the leaders of the science team commented that he had indeed been quite a help, but Scotty waved off the compliment and went back to work. Or he tried to, but Jim wasn't finished asking questions quite yet.

"Any ideas yet?" Jim asked.

"Possibly, sir. The bastards may be sophisticated, but perhaps any enemies this society had were as well, if they had any. Or maybe they were just overconfident. But they don't seem to have included much protection from less-sophisticated means of attack. I'm thinkin' something like a type of old-style electromagnetic pulse might have an affect on them. We're just startin' ta test, and it looks promising."

"Electromagnetic pulse? Really?"

"Aye, sir. Now with our shielding nothing like that would phase the _Enterprise_ t'all, or really any Federation technology today. We've long since worked around that danger. And ya would think they would have too, but it seems they never did—never had a reason to, or assumed anyone trying to stop these things would be either too sophisticated or too stupid to consider it, I don't know."

Jim felt his hope grow. "That's wonderful, Scotty. If this pans out, how long do you think it'll take to find a way to utilize it?"

"Well that's the tricky part, sir—finding precisely the right type of wave, and a way to deliver it in a focused enough way so as not to harm Mr. Spock or damage anything else. These waves can't damage the larger technology of today, that's true, but the smaller instruments in sickbay and lesser ships' systems that aren't as protected might be disrupted or damaged. Another day or two at the very least, Captain."

Jim tried not to be disappointed by that. At least they were onto something, which was much better than twenty-four hours ago.

"That's good, Scotty, thank you. Keep me informed."

"Aye, sir. And how is Mr. Spock, sir?"

"I haven't seen him since this morning; he was sleeping then." Kirk shrugged and shook his head tiredly. "It's hard to say, Scotty. I'll feel better the sooner we can get this over with."

"Of course, sir," the engineer said with sympathy.

With the news of possibilities Jim didn't go straight to his quarters immediately. He stopped by sickbay, instead, hoping that knowing the teams were onto something might help Spock. Normally he wouldn't worry about the Vulcan's determination to make it through things—Spock was nothing if not stubborn, besides his logic—but in the state he was in Jim _was_ concerned.

When the sickbay doors opened he registered Bones running past him before he noticed anything else. He followed, and it wasn't until a moment later that he realized he heard shouting.

"Bones! How many times has this happened today?"

"This is the third time since you left this morning. And it keeps getting worse, too," the doctor told him grimly.

They hurried into the first officer's room together. They found Spock curled on the biobed facing away from them and Uhura perched at his back on the side of it, trying to hold onto him or help somehow. "Doctor! Captain?"

"Can you do anything?" Jim asked McCoy.

Bones shook his head. "Tranquilizers do about nothing now. Found that out last time."

"And you just let me sit on the bridge all day and—!"

"_We_ were here, Jim. He wasn't alone. And what could you have done? How many times have we had this argument?"

He was right. Jim let it be and went around the bed. Spock's eyes were clenched shut, but when Jim took hold of his hands they opened. Any other time the gesture would have been an intrusion, but right now the Vulcan seemed grateful for it. "Jim?" He cut off and cried out, and Jim squeezed his hands tighter.

"Spock, listen. Scotty and the science team think they're onto something. We could have you out of this in a day or so. You've just got to hold on, all right? Do you hear me? They're onto something. Hang on." All right, maybe he was underestimating the time a bit, but he needed his first officer to listen to him.

"Of course, Captain," the Vulcan managed through clenched teeth. Maybe treating the request like an order made it easier. Well, whatever worked.

Spock cried out again, and from behind him Uhura threaded an arm through his and held on, clearly trying not to cry. Bones was beside her, a hand on the Vulcan's shoulder, but there wasn't anymore any of them could do.

Uhura stayed as long as she could, but she was a sensitive person and she couldn't bear listening any more than the captain and doctor liked it. She retreated to wait outside. Bones stayed until the Vulcan had calmed again and the pain seemed to have stopped, but once he was sure Spock was all right he left Jim alone with him.

"Spock…?" Jim only moved long enough to take the stool from the other side of the bed and bring it around to the side his first officer was still facing. "Spock?"

"I am here, Jim."

"Good…you heard what I was saying earlier, didn't you? We've got a lead on something that might knock these things out." He explained, briefly, what Scotty had told him, and Spock nodded a bit.

"Yes…I believe it could work, if implemented correctly."

"Then you've just got to hold out until they're ready."

Spock nodded again, and his eyes closed again for a moment, and Jim knew he'd never seen that much clear relief on the Vulcan's face. He swallowed. "I do not like this, Jim...to be vulnerable this way…to need help this way."

"I know, Spock—believe me, I know."

"Do you? Do you know how offensive it is? For a Vulcan? To be this way?"

Jim leaned closer, resting his elbows on his knees as he sat on the stool at his friend's bedside. "Maybe I can never understand it entirely, but I can be sympathetic. I can care. Me, and Bones, and the others…we can be here for you. That's why people have friends, you know."

Spock just looked at him, and it seemed he really did want to understand.

"You told me you're afraid, and right now I suppose you have good reason to be, but you don't have to be afraid alone. Why do you think we haven't left your side since this began? We're your friends, Spock. That help you feel like you have to be so ashamed of needing? We're more than willing to give it, if you'd let us. We want you to let us." He smiled in amusement. "We keep having these conversations and I keep wondering when you're going to get it."

And there it was, that almost-smile, and it made Jim feel immensely better to see it just now.

"I'm sorry, Jim. But I believe I am, as you say, stubborn."

"Yes, Mr. Spock, you certainly are." Jim touched the Vulcan's arm again briefly. "That's why I know you'll be fine."

"I hope you are right, Jim."

"Hope…that word again…but not just the closest one-word approximation of your desire to return to duty that would fit within the context of the sentence, this time, I trust?"

The almost-smile again, tinged with understandable anxiousness. "No…not now. Perhaps it is only my forced lapsing into emotion, but…I am beginning to think that yourself and the doctor may have something of value in supporting the idea of hope. Perhaps this feeling…this wish…is not so illogical—at the very least, not in situations such as this, when it is all that one can do." He paused. "And I must commend you on your memory of my exact wording. Impressive, for a human, and one under much stress in the weeks between then and now."

Jim laughed before he could stop himself, but Spock didn't seem to mind. Laughing was better than worrying, after all. It was a suitable companion for hope. Instead the Vulcan raised that eyebrow at him, and for a moment it was almost as if all were well.

Then Spock moaned quietly and brought a hand to his head, the nausea or a headache or something getting to him, and Jim winced and stood. "A tranquilizer might do you some good now—let you get some rest. Should I get someone in here for that?"

His first officer let out an uneven breath, and had some trouble bringing in the next one. "Perhaps that would be best…"

"All right…I'll be back, later tonight…"

"This constant vigil is not necessary. I—"

"Spock, what did we just talk about?" Sometimes it was like talking to a child, trying to get human emotional concepts across to the man. An incredibly intelligent child, but a child nonetheless.

But this time the Vulcan relented more easily that usual. "I did not say it was not appreciated," he amended quietly.

"That's what I thought," Jim nodded gently.

* * *

When Jim left Lieutenant Uhura returned. She took the stool, a PADD in hand, and at first she didn't seem to know what to say.

"Is there anything I can do, Mr. Spock?" she asked finally.

_That help you feel like you have to be so ashamed of needing? We're more than willing to give it, if you'd let us. We want you to let us._

"The dizziness…some of the other more constant symptoms; they are affecting my vision," Spock began slowly. "If I asked for a computer for access to the ship's library it would be of little use to me." He paused. "Perhaps you would be willing to read to me?"

Uhura smiled in relief then, and from what he knew of humans and of Lieutenant Uhura in particular, he knew she was glad to be offered a concrete action to perform.

"Of course, Mr. Spock. I'd be delighted to."


	8. Chapter 8

Happy New Year everybody! Here's a new chapter, and I hope ya'll like it. Thanks so much for all of the support! I always look forward to hearing from ya'll.:) Have a great day!

Chapter 8

Something about the way Spock looked at him before he left put Jim at ease. The very few hours he still had in which to sleep before he reported back to sickbay became hours that he slept well. It was first deep sleep he'd had in days. Even if it didn't last very long, it helped.

When he returned to his first officer's room he found Spock sleeping, and for the first time in while the Vulcan's sleep, too, seemed more peaceful. Uhura, sitting on the stool at his bedside, held one of his hands with one of her own and read softly from a PADD she held in the other.

"Lieutenant?"

She looked up and smiled gently. "He's all right for now, sir. The sedatives are working at the moment. He asked me to read to him; I just didn't want to stop once he'd fallen asleep." She shrugged a bit. "I think maybe it made me feel better to be doing something even more than it helped him."

"I've been gone for hours."

"Well I had to take a few breaks. But we can still hear when we're asleep, Captain. It's often the sounds we hear around us as we sleep that are incorporated into our dreams. I thought if I kept reading as much as I could it might help to keep his rest easy."

Jim came to the bedside opposite her and looked down at his friend. It was still clear he wasn't well—his breathing still off, sweat on his forehead, and he was pale even for a Vulcan—but he looked much more at ease than he ever had since this had all begun again.

"It seems to have worked," he said appreciatively.

"I don't think it was only me. Whatever you said to him before I came back in, sir…something must have gotten through."

Jim sighed. "Well I'd certainly hoped so."

He traded places with Uhura and bid her goodnight, encouraging her to get some sleep herself. She glanced at the sleeping Vulcan again and nodded. "I just may be able to."

The captain was glad of it—of all of it—but he knew that if it had been that long, the quiet couldn't last much longer.

He was right. Within half an hour he was glad Uhura had gone and that Bones wasn't here, either. The nurse came in to be sure it wasn't anything other than the usual, and it wasn't. She was waved away. When she was gone Jim sat on the bed again like he had last night—had it really only been last night?—because doing it made _him_ feel like he was doing something the way reading to Spock had helped Uhura. So he gathered his friend up against him again and held on, because there was nothing else he _could_ do.

This time Spock found his hand and squeezed it, and Jim knew Uhura had been right.

* * *

When Scotty called him down to the labs the labs just after midday the next day Jim went as quickly as legs would carry him.

"I think we've almost got it, sir. We've identified the correct type and strength of pulse ta use; we've tested it on half of the samples and they're all as dead as a warp engine with no dilithium. Now we only need ta perfect the delivery. Before the day's out we should we ready."

"I thought you said it would be closer to two days."

"Well we haven't been ta bed t'all since I told ya that yesterday, sir."

Jim's eyebrows went up. "Scotty…"

The engineer smiled a bit. "We're all right, sir. That's what coffee's for, after all, and the good doctor's been supplyin' us with stimulants as long as we promise we won't keep it up for too long. We all know we need an answer, Captain. We can't let Mr. Spock suffer, now can we?" Scott made a face for a moment. "I was up there earlier today, sir. To check in on him. I know t'isn't a pretty sight. I promise ye we'll have this figured as soon as we can."

"You really are a miracle worker, Scotty."

"Well let's not say that just yet, sir. It has to work first."

Either way, after that it was difficult to go back to the bridge and sit there. He could have left again; he could have gone back to sickbay. He could have done that every day, captain's prerogative, with nothing pressing on the bridge, but it reassured the crew to have him in his seat through his usual duty shift. He'd been doing it for them, and if he could do it today too then he would.

So he stayed until his shift was up, but then he went straight to sickbay. He found Scotty there, showing what he and the science teams had rigged up to the doctor. It looked like a modified medical device—one of the ones used to repair head injures, but with an extra attachment and some circuitry rearranged.

"Bones? Scotty? Is that it?"

"Supposedly," Bones answered skeptically.

"We've tested it on the rest of the little beasties and it knocked 'em right out," Scotty put in. "Every test. We don't have any more of them to try to kill, sir. It's this or nothing."

"Bones?"

The doctor shrugged. "They seemed to have modified it correctly; meaning it still works like it's supposed to, medically, with the added function of delivering the electromagnetic pulse safely. It_ shouldn't_ disrupt any of Spock's systems, but I can tell you a medical team and I will be standing by with a defibrillator and unmodified neural stimulator and anything else we might need, just in case. I'm not taking any chances."

"Of course not," Jim agreed.

Scotty nodded in agreement as well, knowing the situation was serious enough that the assertion was no reflection of their estimation of the skill of himself and the teams he'd been working with. It was merely caution.

"All right," McCoy sighed. "We'll be ready in a few minutes."

So this could all be over in less than half an hour. Jim certainly hoped that was the case. But for now, he and Scotty could do nothing but retreat to Spock's room and wait.

"Jim?"

Spock tried to move when he saw them, but he couldn't really. He winced and fell back. Jim went to the bed and rested a hand on his friend's shoulder. The Vulcan looked awful, was barely conscious, and Jim couldn't help wonder morbidly—angrily— how many attacks he'd had today. "It's all right, Spock. I told you we'd have you out of this soon, didn't I? They're nearly ready."

He sat on the edge of the bed at Spock's side, and didn't interrupt Scotty as the engineer launched into the details of what they'd done. It was a bid to keep the Vulcan awake. McCoy had instructed them to wake him up if he wasn't awake, and to keep him that way. It would be easier to tell if it their attempt was working if he were conscious, but at the same time it would be better not to put anymore drugs into his system before they tried this.

Spock started to drift off again anyway, and Jim shook him a bit. Spock opened his eyes, but he grimaced.

"I know, Spock. You're exhausted and you're hurting, but if you'll just stay with us a little while longer this might all be over soon. All right? Just stay awake for me. Can you do that?"

The Vulcan made a quiet sound of pain, but he nodded weakly. God, he already looked so much worse even than he had this morning. Jim exchanged a worried glance with his chief engineer. This had to work.

Thankfully it wasn't long after that that McCoy and Nurse Chapel rolled a cart in, with two other nurses and Scotty's modified neural repair device.

Bones came to the head of the bed to make a few adjustments on the monitor to prepare for the procedure. "There," he said finally. "That's it. I guess we'd better try this if we're going to. Spock?" He glanced down at the Vulcan, who nodded once more. "All right…"

"Do I need to move?" Jim asked.

"If anything we're not expecting happens you need to move," Bones told him. "You're fine for now."

But he didn't want to be in the way if there was an emergency. He slid off the bed and went around it anyway, retreating with Scotty to the opposite side to be out of the way.

Out of the way, but still close. Scotty hung back a bit more, but Jim moved close to the edge, and a hand found Spock's arm. He wanted his friend to know he was there. Spock knew, of course, but he was still so near unconsciousness Jim thought the contact might help.

He exchanged a knowing glance with McCoy. "You just can't be touching him when the pulse is applied; safer that way," Bones reminded him.

"The doctor is correct," Spock agreed quietly.

Jim smiled a little. "It's all right, Spock; I wasn't going to argue."

McCoy and Chapel made certain Spock was flat on his back, and applied Scotty's modified device to his forehead. Bones activated something that seemed to allow him to control it from his tricorder, and then nodded that he was ready.

"Spock?" Jim asked.

The Vulcan raised his eyebrows tiredly. "I believe the expression is 'I am as ready as I will ever be.'"

Jim chuckled once, and pulled his arm back. Inwardly he crossed his fingers. "Sounds good to me. Go, Bones."

The doctor let out a breath. "Well. Here goes something. I hope."

_We all hope,_ Jim answered silently.

McCoy activated a control on his tricorder, and the device on Spock's forehead began to hum. There was another sound a moment later—a deeper sound, presumably the pulse or the sound of the small device delivering it—and Spock's eyes closed and for a moment nothing happened. Or maybe it had worked. Was working.

But the doctor was scowling at his tricorder, and Scotty reached for his own.

"Damnit," McCoy swore. "It only—I think it only knocked out about half of them. And they're dead all right, but—"

"The rest of them have adapted somehow," Scotty filled in in frustration, looking over the readouts on his own tricorder now.

Then why was Spock so quiet? His eyes were still closed. He was _too _quiet, but if anything else were wrong McCoy would be saying something by now—

"Jim, the rest of them are compensating! Rearranging! They're—"

Spock's arm nearest him shot up from the bed, the hand catching his own arm. It squeezed so tightly it was painful and then Spock was sitting up quickly—something he shouldn't have been able to do.

"There will be no further attempts to thwart us." It was Spock's voice but it wasn't Spock. Not-Spock was sliding from the bed, pushing Jim back. His arm was being twisted. He couldn't pull away or it might be broken; certainly Spock's body at normal strength had the ability to do that, and it seemed these machines had the ability to force Spock's muscles to action. "Any further attempt against us will result in the prolonged suffering of your companion."

"Captain—!" Scotty was moving to help him, but Jim threw out his free arm.

"Don't!" He focused on Not-Spock and glared fiercely. "_Prolonged_ suffering? You've already prolonged it long enough!"

"Do you wish us to end it? To end his life?"

"No!"

Not-Spock pressed him into the wall, and the twisting of his arm was starting to hurt a lot more. It twisted farther. "No. You do not wish that. You believe you can stop us, if you continue to try. You cannot. Perhaps we should threaten to end his life immediately, instead, if you attempt to interfere again."

Jim bit back a cry of pain. "Why!" he demanded. "What's the point of doing this to him!"

"We serve the Ancestors and their descendants, and the sanctity of their first homeland. You violated it. Then you attempted escape. This one must may the price of your punishment."

"So you're going to kill him? Is that it?"

"He will die. Your insolence only prolongs his suffering. We heard through his ears of your plan to destroy us. It allowed us to adapt enough of us in time to avoid that destruction."

Jim's stomach dropped at that. Trying to tell Spock he would be all right yesterday had meant ruining what chance he had? Was it really his fault?

"We'll stop you," he swallowed. "We won't let you kill him."

Not-Spock twisted his arm further, and this time he did cry out.

"Jim!"

"Bones, stay back!" he gasped. "All of you! That's an order!"

Not-Spock still looked at him coldly, and now tilted the Vulcan's head. "We warn you, Captain. If you attempt to counter us again there _will_ be consequences. This one will die with or without your efforts, but as you can see we are capable of controlling him completely. He cannot fight us, as you have also seen. There are things which we can do that would be worse that what we do to him now. Beyond simple, physical pain. We could force him to kill you, James T. Kirk, and everyone on this ship for whom he cares. We could force him to gain control of the ship and cause it to self-destruct. He would suffer much more, knowing what he had done, if we were to do any of those things."

"You can't—"

"We will. If you continue to resist us. If you do not, if you leave us be, we will only continue in the vein in which we have begun. This one will be dead in 2.876 days, and we will deactivate."

Jim didn't know if it was pain or panic or both, but he knew he had to try talking these things, even if it sounded a lot like begging. What else did he have? They couldn't reason with these things' creators; how could he expect to be able to reason with their machines? "Please! Don't! What can we do? Don't just—"

Not-Spock did not answer. He released Jim's arm which a wrenching motion that hurt nearly as much as everything else put together and served to shove him down the wall at the same time. The captain ended up on his backside on the floor against the wall, cradling his arm. Above him Spock went abruptly limp and crumpled backward.

Scotty caught him as best he could and lowered the Vulcan to the floor. Spock was already thrashing, himself again but in pain. He was coughing through his cries, almost choking, and green blood leaked from his nose and the side of his mouth. Either those machines were doing that on purpose or however they'd taken complete control of him had actually done some damage somewhere.

"Bones—!" Jim managed.

The doctor was already running, around the bed and dropping to his knees at the Vulcan's side. Chapel and the other two nurses followed with the cart, and answered quickly when McCoy started barking orders. There were hyposprays and scans and more scans and hyposprays, until at least Spock could breathe and he wasn't bleeding any longer. When it was quieter the nurses left the room on request.

They hadn't had time to move him; he was still lying on Scotty's knees when the activity cleared and Jim could really see him again. The captain himself had remained where he was, against the wall and just enough out of the way. The doctor and the engineer _were_ about to move Spock back up to the bed when the Vulcan called out.

"Jim…! Jim!"

The captain pushed himself forward on his knees, using his undamaged arm to help bring him to his friend's side. "I'm right here, Spock."

Spock was still in pain. That much was clear. And for the first time there were tears on his face. When he spoke what he said made that make more sense.

"Jim, you must kill me," he gasped. "They will—they will do what they threaten. They will endanger you, the ship, if…if…i-it will not take much provocation. The risk is too great. You must kill me. I will die any case. Do not take the risk. Kill me. Now."

"Are you crazy? We can't do that." He squeezed his friend's hands with his one cooperating one. "We won't."

Spock was looking at the injured arm he held against his chest. "I do not take this lightly, but I do not want to be a danger to the ship. To you. Not…again. This time it is not something I can…can fight, Jim. I cannot. They were correct in that. Please, Jim, you must—" He cut off and shouted in pain, as if they didn't want him to continue. "You must kill me! Please!"

"You're not getting out of this that easy!" McCoy countered heatedly. "We're not going to do that, Spock!"

Jim squeezed tighter, the Vulcan's hands, trying to keep his attention through the pain. "Don't you understand? We're not giving up!"

"Then…then the brig. I must be guarded. Restrained. They—ah!" Then he was shouting again, writhing.

"Captain, I'm sorry," Scotty was saying. "It should have worked. This should'na have happened!"

"It's not your fault, Scotty. They knew what we were going to do. They adapted themselves—enough of them to survive to accomplish their mission. That's my fault. I told him." Jim felt sick himself now.

"Captain…"

It took several long minutes, but Spock quieted. The pain died down for now. None of them moved except to shift hold of him, and Jim couldn't do much in that regard. He only had one arm to work with until his injured one was seen to. By the time Spock was quiet again McCoy had him, braced against his shoulder. The Vulcan was unconscious by then.

"2.87 days?" the doctor muttered angrily. "At this rate I'd be surprised if he made it through tomorrow."

"They'll do exactly what they say, though," Jim said grimly. "They'll draw it out exactly that long, and then they'll kill him. Unless we do something." He shook his head. "And I just…wanted shore leave to come around. I wanted to get him home to recover, and now I might not get him home at all."

Mr. Scott and the doctor just managed to pick Spock up enough to get him back on the bed, Jim helping as much as he could. It was more the Vulcan's awkward size than anything; he'd lost any excess weight by now. Jim left Bones to tend to him, and dragged Scotty from the room.

Shore leave…he was having an idea, but he wasn't going to make the same mistake he'd made last time. Spock was sleeping, but his ears were working. Those things could hear him if he was anywhere in earshot. He didn't stop until he and Scotty were all the way out in the corridor and several sections away.

"Captain, what is it?"

"How far from the shore leave planet are we at maximum warp?"

"Shore leave, sir? How is this the time—"

"Scotty, everything on that planet was _manufactured_, not illusion. If anyone knows enough about advanced machinery, maybe they do. Maybe they'd help us. Their medical technology is far behind ours, too. Doctor McCoy was _dead _in appearance, by all our tricorder scans…for several minutes. Yet when they were through he was alive and well and you couldn't tell he'd ever been hurt. They didn't seem to want anyone to die there; maybe if we brought him down to surface…"

Maybe it was a desperate move, but it was the only one he had at the moment.

Scotty was nodding by now. "Of course. It's worth a try, if there's nothing else. We'll be looking, but in the meantime I can give ya warp eight. Maybe nine to alternate with every now and then. It'll be about two days even at that. We'll be cuttin' it pretty close, but I think we can make it."

"Good. Get to engineering; I'll call the bridge and order the course change from here. Have the warp engines ready as soon as you can, and let them know when they are. I'll be in sickbay if you need me, but don't bother asking when you alternate to nine if and when you can do that. Just…get us there, as fast as you can."

"Right away, sir."

Jim did as he said he'd do; while still far enough away from Spock he punched an intercom panel and called the course correction and the speed at which they'd be traveling to the bridge. He made sure they knew that Scotty had complete control of said course and speed for the next two days until they arrived at their destination.

Then he went back to sickbay, because there was nowhere else he could bear to be now.

* * *

When Spock blearily opened his eyes again only McCoy remained in the room with him, absently taking tricorder readings that would be of no real use and tucking the blankets around him.

"I should be restrained," the Vulcan tried again. The attempt was half-hearted. He had no illusions that the stubborn Doctor would listen to him.

"Shut up, Spock. I'm not going to do that now, and you know Jim wouldn't either. If anything happens he'll…do what he has to do. You know that. He's a good captain."

"Yes…"

"Anyway, I'm sure he'll be back, but he took off with that look on his face."

Spock did not have to ask what the doctor meant. Jim Kirk had many 'looks' but in this case he knew it would mean that Jim truly did not plan to give up. Perhaps something had occurred to him. But he had been wise to leave the room if that were the case.

"I am content with your company, Doctor," he answered quietly. His voice rasped. He did not like it any more than he ever had, but at least now he was not ashamed.

His vision was not clear, but he thought McCoy grimaced. "Spock…damnit. I'm sorry. You don't deserve any of this. All you did was save my life."

Spock swallowed. "I would not change my actions."

"That's ridiculous. Of course you would. I'm not worth all of this."

"I would have done the same for any shipmate, and _you_ are my friend. And I have come to understand that that is an important thing, indeed."

The doctor made some sort of face again, and Spock thought he saw something bright—light, reflecting, near his eyes. Tears? But…

"Damned…Vulcan…if you die on us I'll never forgive you, you understand? Don't try me."

"No, Doctor…I would not dream of it."


	9. Chapter 9

Yay school. *headdesk* Anyway, I'm still here, just gonna be a little slower now that Im back at school. Hopefully not too slow. ;) Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter. Thanks for reading and reviewing!

Chapter 9

Jim made his way back to sickbay, and when he arrived Nurse Chapel was already waiting for him just inside the main doors.

"So sure I'd be back so soon?"

"With that arm twisted so badly I know _I _would be. Your wrist could be sprained; we should take a look at it right away."

"Doctor's McCoy still back there?"

Chapel nodded. "Yes, sir." A shadow passed over her face, just for a moment. "But Mr. Spock is all right, right now."

"Good…all right, let's see to this arm then."

The damage was a bit worse than even Chapel had suspected, but it was still easily fixed. Jim supposed he should be grateful for modern medical technology, but today he wasn't in the mood. It was technology that was killing his first officer.

Jim was perched on the edge of a biobed in the main ward when Bones emerged, about the time the nurse was finished with the regenerator.

"Jim? How's the arm?"

The captain shrugged and carefully stretched out the asked-after appendage. He winced. "Fine, I guess. I'm sure it'll be sore for a day or two, but I'm fine."

"A sprain and a microfracture," Chapel filled in. "Both healed now, but yes, there may be some soreness for a few days."

"Wonderful." Jim slid off the bed and approached his friend, and realized immediately as he followed the doctor back to his office that something was wrong. "Bones? Are you all right? I think that little scene in there scared all of us…"

"Understatement," McCoy growled. "For a minute there I thought they were going to kill you. Now we know they're trying to kill Spock."

"I'm fine, Bones, and we're not going to let anyone…kill Spock, either." He'd hesitated. He'd almost said 'hurt' but he couldn't say that, now could he? Spock had already been hurt quite a bit and there was nothing he'd been able to do about it. He could do nothing about what might happen over the next two days, either. Before they reached their destination.

McCoy was shaking his head, sinking into his desk chair. "I know that." He didn't say anything else, and he looked miserable. Jim _felt _miserable, so he knew what that was like. But this seemed like something else.

"Bones, what _is_ it?"

The doctor didn't answer at first, and Jim took the seat across from him and tried to look him in the eye. He avoided it.

"Bones?"

Finally McCoy let out a breath, and his gaze came up enough that Jim realized his friend's eyes weren't entirely dry. "I spend all that time teasing him about being Vulcan…telling him he should learn how to be a little more human. I'm joking, but I'm not. I always figured it'd be better if he stopped fighting himself at least little. If he figured out it's all right to rely on someone every now and then…figured out he doesn't have to go through life cut off. But I—" He shook his head again and swallowed. "I never wanted it forced on him like this, Jim; this is cruel."

"None of us wanted this, Bones. It's not your fault. Is that it? You feel like it's your fault somehow?"

"All of this came down on him because he did one thing, Jim; he saved _me_. Now he's in there, flat on his back for days being put through levels of pain no living being should ever have to experience, probably dying, and all because of me. And there's not a damned thing I can do about it!"

"Would you listen to yourself? Do you even remember what you had to tell me on the planet? You're not doing nothing. You're doing everything you can. You've been supervising the science teams, you've done everything you can for him medically, and more than anything you've been in there with him just as much as I have."

McCoy made a face. "It still wouldn't have happened if he hadn't done what he did."

"That was his choice, Bones. I would've made the same choice if I could have; if it'd have done any good for me to do it."

"You _were_ trying to do it, before Spock stopped you. If he hadn't done it you would have anyway even if you _did_ know it was going to kill you. That's why you piss me off," the doctor muttered.

"Protecting my ship and my crew is my job."

"I said it pisses me off. I didn't say you and your heroic tendencies were a _bad _thing. But I'm your friend, Jim, _and_ I'm a doctor; it's _supposed_ to bother me that you'd be just fine with throwing your life away like that."

Jim smiled a little. "Giving it up to keep one or both of you or anyone else on this ship alive wouldn't be throwing it away."

Bones let out a breath, mostly defeated but unwilling to give up the argument because that was just his way. "It would be on me; I'm just the cranky old country doctor."

"Well apparently Spock thought you were worth it."

Maybe they were both thinking it, but McCoy glared at him for saying it and though the dampness had faded from his eyes it was back now. "Damnit, Jim—!" He deflated quickly and leaned back into his chair. "I'm sorry," he said. "I tell myself it's not getting to me and then it happens again…"

"I know." It didn't get any easier. His stomach still clenched painfully every time it happened; every time those damn things hurt Spock; every time he was helpless to do anything but be there.

But being there was not doing nothing, and they were not doing nothing now. They were on their way to the shore leave planet, and bringing Spock there _had_ to do some good. It had to.

"Come on, Bones. Maybe we should both stay back there for a while."

* * *

The captain and the doctor came back to his room together, not long after McCoy had left. Spock knew better by then than to try to move, so he did not. As it was air was growing more difficult to come by even immobile.

"Are you quite all right, Doctor? You left in something of a rush."

"Am _I_ all right? Why in blazes are you asking me if _I'm_ all right? You're the one—"

"Bones," Jim admonished. Spock noticed quickly even from the somewhat awkward angle of lying on his back that Jim was still rubbing at his arm.

"Jim? Are _you_ all right?"

"I'm fine, Spock—all fixed now." The captain smiled as if to reassure him, holding up the arm, but then he winced and brought it down. "Almost, anyway. Don't worry about it, Spock. It wasn't you."

He was quiet until Jim had perched on the edge of his bed and the doctor had taken the stool to sit on.

"But the machines within me that did harm you are as much a continued threat as they claim to be," Spock reminded the captain then.

"That doesn't mean I'm going to throw a sick man in the brig."

McCoy smirked weakly at that. "Told you."

"So you did…" He trailed off and blinked, trying once again in vain to clear his vision. His head ached. Everything ached, after the nanoprobes forcing his weak body into motion.

"And since you're not going anywhere, we thought we'd move the party here," Jim was saying.

"I…don't follow."

"It's a joke, Spock," McCoy filled in.

"Ah. Of course. I did not see how any of this could be considered a 'party,' however…" He had to pause for a breath. "I am also extremely fatigued. My mental faculties are not what they could be." Jim and McCoy were smiling even though he knew they were worried. The situation was worse now than it had been yet, but they could do that.

As long as he had spent fighting emotions, suppressing them, locking them away—his entire lifetime—it sometimes amazed him how humans could overcome them. It seemed, at times, as if emotion itself in the positive was what allowed them to move past those that were negative. It wasn't at all logical—emotion as cure for emotion—but he saw it all too often in his friends. Though he complained about humans and their emotionalism sometimes, he had to admit that that particular quality he did not mind. Jim, especially, was forever trying to find the good in anything…to turn something horrible into something a little less so. It was something he admired.

It was helping now. By now he was also far too drained to fight much, against the emotions that threatened to run rampant with his controls all but taken from him. He did not mind that his friend's smiles and their jokes comforted him. He even ventured to imagine, for a moment, that it was any other day than the one it was.

"Are you smiling, Mr. Spock? If you're not it's a very close mockery of one; much closer than your usual renditions."

He had not realized that one corner of his mouth had curled up much farther than he usually allowed it to until Jim spoke. His eyebrows went up, and he let it settle back into the more common ghost of a smile he sometimes did allow himself. "I am not myself. I cannot be held accountable for my actions."

It seemed strange, now, that something so admittedly terrifying had taken place less than an hour before. For a moment it seemed strange that there might be—and likely was—worse to come.

"Of course not," McCoy answered. His smirk was no longer weak, and Jim glanced at the doctor and seemed glad that was so.

There was silence for a long moment, but not uncomfortable silence. Jim, still perched on the edge of the biobed, glanced back and forth between Spock and the doctor before he eventually spoke again.

"Why have we never played cards or something? We're always playing chess, and someone's left out. Three people can't play chess. We should do something three people can do. We really should."

And Spock supposed that if he really were to die, this would not be a poor last moment to remember.

* * *

Jim and Bones both stayed in sickbay that night, neither of them willing to leave. Even when the pain came again for Spock and the somewhat lighthearted mood they'd pulled from somewhere was shattered they couldn't bear to. Being there really was all they could do, after all.

Spock seemed to understand, too. He didn't question them about why they remained anymore. There was no more talk of logic or danger or the brig. Neither could they talk about the plan to save him, but Spock also seemed to have gotten the message that they were not going to give up, whatever they were planning.

Bones knew, though, and he approved of the idea even if only because it was the only one they had.

Two days. It would be two whole days before they reached the shore leave planet, and Jim didn't think either of them planned to leave that room again unless they had to. He checked in the bridge, occasionally, and sometimes went briefly to the mess hall to find something he could stand to choke down. Strangely enough it was Bones he had to make certain was eating, when usually it was the other way around. Not that either of them felt like it, but they had to keep their strength up.

Still, Jim felt guilty eating when Spock could scarcely keep anything down even when he tried to—which wasn't often. The Vulcan was tall and had always been thin, but now he was becoming unbearably so. It was unnerving; it had been barely two weeks since they'd first beamed down to the planet. It was frightening to think of what Spock had been through in that time.

They slept when they could, taking turns catching naps on the cot by the wall whenever Spock was able to rest. It wasn't often. The attacks came more often now, and Jim hated to think it was because of the argument he'd had with the nanoprobes but he couldn't change it. Because of it he spent as much time sitting _in_ the biobed as bedside it. When the pain came Spock didn't care about the closeness, and it was probably safer for someone to be holding onto him somehow anyway.

If he were let alone he might hurt himself further from thrashing, or fall out of the bed entirely. Bones told him in Spock's weakened state a fall like that wouldn't be a good thing at all.

"He's having enough trouble breathing already, and it's still getting worse. If he falls or cracks a rib moving too violently, sure, I can knit it, but not until he's still, and if it lasts too long and he can't get enough air…"

So Jim sat behind him and held him, upright against his shoulder and chest so it was easier for the Vulcan to breathe when it happened. Sometimes Bones did that. Jim wanted to be able to be there indefinitely, but he was only human. The other of them not behind Spock was on the edge of the bed in front of him. From two directions they managed to keep him still. They never would have been able to if he'd been at full strength, but now he scarcely had any. When he wasn't hurting, not moving involuntarily, he could barely move at all.

Even without any accidents or cracked or broken bones it became more terrifying, every time, as Spock's erratic respiratory function grew worse. He hadn't stopped breathing at any point yet, but it had come close. At least the probes seemed to realize that even if they were going to bring the attacks of pain more often, they needed to be shorter now to keep Spock alive and breathing. But they were starting to cut it close, and Jim wondered angrily why they didn't just stop interfering with his respiratory system at all.

Then he remembered the evening he'd found Spock on the floor in his quarters, the fear in his eyes, and he realized it wasn't all about the physical pain. They'd threatened to force the Vulcan to kill his friends, after all. Of course it wasn't. They were using the fear just as much as anything else.

That, of course, only made Jim angrier. Bones too, when he realized it. They didn't talk about it—they didn't want to—but they both knew it. They knew Spock knew it.

Then he did stop breathing, before halfway through the next night. Jim was relieved he was the one at the head of the biobed and Bones was the one standing, leaving the doctor free to run for hyposprays and call for help.

"Bones!"

Spock was shuddering in his arms. The Vulcan's eyes were wide and he simply wasn't able to draw in any air.

"Spock, hang on…"

McCoy ignored the captain, focusing on the task at hand as he should anyway. He tried several things before Spock finally pulled in half a breath that looked painful…though that wasn't saying much in comparison to the pain he was in anyhow. Very soon whatever the doctor had done was not helping anymore.

"Bones!" Jim said again.

"Stop it!" the doctor shouted. He was not talking to Jim. He grabbed the Vulcan's face and shouted into it. "Stop it! He'll die, do you hear me! He can't breathe! You said you wanted him to live until sometime the day after tomorrow, so let him, damnit! Stop!"

Jim's stomach dropped, as he realized Bones was out of options.

And then Spock was limp against him, gasping painful breaths but no longer hurting otherwise. Jim held onto him as the Vulcan turned his face into his chest and worked to bring his breathing under control. Bones dropped on the edge of the bed, looking dead-tired and world weary. The doctor's hand rested on Spock's arm, but he didn't seem entirely aware of it or anything else at the moment.

Damnit, why couldn't that shore leave planet be closer? Scotty was already using warp 9 as often as he dared.

Jim was worrying over Bones when he noticed Spock was shivering again; not much, but he was.

"Spock?"

But it wasn't pain. It took Jim a moment to realize he wasn't seeing or hearing things, but his first officer was crying. Not like the few tears shed over his determination that he should be killed, either. It was soft, but he was crying into Jim's shirt no differently than a human might. He was trying to hide it.

"Spock…"

"I am sorry…no more control…I…"

"It's all right, Spock…"

Bones was paying attention now. His face softened and the hand on Spock's arm closed gently. "You've actually done pretty good not doing it before now. I don't think most humans would have made it this long."

They were both quiet after that; they said nothing else until the Vulcan calmed on his own. When he did Spock turned his face out a bit, enough at least to see them. "I…believed I would die. When I could not breathe. It seemed…inevitable, for a long few moments, and…I do not wish to die."

"You told me that much before," Jim reminded him.

The Vulcan shook his head. "You don't understand, Jim, I…I cannot die…not yet. I still…I have not…been able to tell my mother that I love her. My father does not know how much I respect him despite our…our disagreements. I have not told you or…or you, Doctor…I have not told either of you how I value your friendship."

"You just did," Jim pointed out, managing a small smile.

"I'm sure your mother knows how you feel, Spock," Bones added quietly. "If she's your mother, she knows you; she knows you're Vulcan, too. She knows Vulcans don't just say those things. And she knows you love her whether you say it or not."

Spock swallowed, and he still had to pause for breaths but overall it seemed to be growing much easier for him to breathe as the minutes passed. Maybe the nanoprobes had finally gotten the message.

"I hope that that is true. But I am…half human, as you so enjoy reminding me. Perhaps that means I should have told her in the past…or that I should have said something to the two of you before now. I…if I am to die I wish for you know that I have been grateful for your companionship."

"Mine included, hmm?" McCoy teased lightly.

One of those almost smiles, though it wavered. "Yes, Doctor. Including yours. It is comforting, in its own grating way."

Bones snorted, but he was still smiling. Or trying to.

Jim wanted to tell him he wasn't going to die, but he didn't say it. He wanted to, but Spock had been right the first time he'd said it: He couldn't know that. He wished he could.

* * *

It was the last conversation they really had. By midmorning the next day Spock had lapsed into remaining unconscious the lion's share of the time. Now that the probes were allowing him to breathe almost normally and he didn't have to fight for it, it was easier for him to simply pass out when the pain became too great.

"His fever's coming up too. It'll be dangerous soon. The toxin's still working," Bones told him.

"Your medical lab teams don't have anything on it?" Jim asked.

"Nothing…it's too foreign. We're just not coming up with anything."

But sometime late that night—more in the extremely early morning, really—they would arrive at the shore leave planet, just hours short of the time the nanoprobes had announced that Spock would be dead. As the day wore on, their pronouncement seemed more and more real. The Vulcan was burning with fever, often shaking with pain but never fully conscious, and always moving closer to a state in which his body would simply cease to function from the strain.

Jim spent more time pacing than anything, then. Bones was the one who was still able to sit still for any length of time, so he was the one at the bedside when the captain was not. They held the Vulcans hand, his shoulder, anything…just hoping that he was still aware they were there and that it might help.

_What if we really do lose him? _But he shut that thought down immediately.

* * *

They planned it meticulously.

There would be no discussion of what they were doing within Spock's earshot. When they arrived at the shore leave planet Bones and a medical team silently brought a gurney into the Vulcan's room to get him to the transporter room. Jim walked with them there, not saying a word either.

Only he and Bones beamed down with Spock, and in minutes, they were on the planet's surface.

It was as beautiful as Jim remembered. The grass and trees and the lake and the rest of it were just as they had been. The sky was perfectly blue, and the temperature perfect with only the barest hint of a breeze enough to stabilize it. The sun was bright, and jarring coming from ship's night.

"Bones? How is he?"

The doctor was already scowling at his tricorder. "His heart, his lungs, other organs…everything's far too stressed…starting to shut down. He's slipping away, Jim. If those damned machines meant to be as accurate as they sounded I don't know how he's supposed to make it through the last few hours they said they'd give him."

Jim swore. "Think about what we want," he said, trying not to be too specific. Bones knew what he meant. The planet's production facilities operated by reading the minds of those on the surface, which also seemed to be how the Caretaker became aware of their presence and wishes…or problems.

"I _am_."

Nothing happened. They were alone, under the trees by the lake.

"We told you of what could happen if you attempted to interfere again, Captain."

Jim looked down at the gurney in alarm. Spock's eyes were open, but as it had happened more than two days ago now, it was not Spock behind them. The captain forced himself to remain calm.

"Who says we're interfering?" he answered casually.

"That much is clear." Not-Spock glanced about their surroundings. "We are not on the Enterprise. We detected the transporter beam. You would not have brought your friend, near death, anywhere at all unless you had planned some attempt to save him."

"You can't know that for certain," the captain retorted. "We're doing nothing but standing here, after all."

"We can make a reasonable assumption. You were warned, Captain."

That was when Not-Spock sprung from the gurney, reaching for Jim's throat. The captain jumped back, going for his phaser. It was precisely for this reason that they'd brought them, set to stun. Spock dropped in the grass before he could bring his weapon to bear, and he realized Bones had fired. The doctor didn't look happy about it.

"Damnit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a security officer!"

"It's not my fault! We've done this as carefully as we could."

Jim went to his knees at his Vulcan friend's side, and the doctor came with his tricorder. He was shaking his head again.

"I sure hope the stun keeps him under long enough; sedatives don't phase these things' control, and I don't think we can stun him again. He's too far gone as it is. Another stun might kill him." Bones let out a frustrated breath and looked around, as if to say _If these people are supposed to help us, where the hell are they?_

Jim didn't know what hit him, except that it hit him in the face—and hard. One moment he was on his knees leaning over Spock, willing him to hold on long enough for help to come, and the next his head exploded. He was flung onto his back from the impact, and rolled away instinctively. He tried to come up on his knees but ended up with his face in the dirt. He'd been hit too hard to recover that quickly.

He heard scuffling, and Bones swearing, blows landed, and what had happened was clear. The effects of the stun had been overcome quickly by the nanoprobes and Not-Spock was up again and trying to cause damage.

Now if he could just get up. He waited until he was certain he could do it, faking unconsciousness until then. When he knew he wouldn't falter he jumped up and pulled his phaser free, spinning in the direction of the noise just as he heard McCoy shout.

Not-Spock had him pinned to the ground, with his hands around the doctor's throat and a knee in his chest. The doctor had a blackening eye and Jim was sure he was sporting a good bruise over his own left cheekbone by now, but it seemed Bones had not gone down without a fight. Spock's bottom lip was split and seeping green blood.

"Get off of him. Now," Jim demanded.

"We could break his neck or crush his chest, among other things. Perhaps you would prefer to choose the method yourself."

"I said get off of him!"

Not-Spock looked up then, and saw the phaser trained on him. "That will not help you, Captain. Even if this body were dead we could force it into action."

"Why would you want to do that? He wouldn't be alive to know what you were forcing him to do."

"Our purpose is as punishment for all three of you, through this one. Even if he is dead, it would be punishment enough for one of you to see the other die at his hand."

"You can't do anything if his body's reduced to atoms," Jim threatened, and with a thumb he changed the setting. His stomach twisted as he did it.

"But you do not wish to do that."

"I don't, but I will before I let you kill my chief medical officer."

Spock's hands were around the doctor's throat, but they weren't squeezing enough to prevent him from speaking. "Jim, don't! They might still come. You can save him. Don't—!" Then the hands squeezed enough to silence him and he garbled.

"Let him go," Jim said again. "Or I'll fire."

"I do not believe you will."

"I will!"

"Then fire. Certainly killing your companion yourself is also a harsh enough reality."

"That would destroy you."

"We have no sense of self-preservation. That is not important." And then Not-Spock was ignoring him, the probes focused on McCoy. Now they really began to strangle him, and the knee in the doctor's chest pressed in all at once.

"Stop!" Jim thought he heard something snap, even from several feet anyway. All he knew for certain was Bones let out a garbled cry and tried to cough, but he couldn't really do either with his throat being squeezed.

"Stop!" Jim tried again. He felt sick. His aim wasn't steady because his arm was beginning to shake.

He didn't want to kill Spock. God, he didn't. How could he?

But if he didn't the nanoprobes were going to kill Bones, and he knew Spock would never forgive him if somehow he survived and McCoy did not. Jim didn't want anything to happen to Bones, either.

McCoy was in pain. That much was clear. Something had to be broken, and he was choking. "Sp—" he tried to plead, and failed. Jim finished for him.

"Damnit, Spock, if you're in there and you can do something, do something!"

There was no response, and now Bones's eyelids were fluttering and he was turning colors.

"Spock," Jim pleaded.

Not-Spock did not answer; did not even acknowledge him. The probes began to press the Vulcan's knee down into McCoy's chest again and the doctor spasmed weakly in pain and then began to fade again. That was when Jim knew he had no choice. Bones was going die.

_Spock, I'm sorry…_

His vision blurred, and he was almost afraid he'd miss his target.

But he fired.

Or he thought he had. He didn't realize he'd closed his eyes, either, until he opened them again when the phaser was abruptly gone. It was just gone, and Not-Spock was falling back into the grass, unmoving.

"That will be quite enough."

The voice came from behind him, and Jim twisted to find the Caretaker approaching from behind the trees.

"What took you so long!"

"I apologize for the delay, Captain, but just as you are bound by rules such as your Prime Directive, I am bound by _our_ laws. No one was injured on our soil until now. I could not interfere until that occurred."

On the ground Bones was gagging, struggling for air, and Jim forgot the Caretaker for now and went to him. He tried to pull the tricorder from under him. It didn't look good at all, and the captain had the feeling he'd have to send him straight back to the ship to a waiting emergency medical team.

"Bones! What's broken? I heard—"

McCoy gripped his wrist and dragged in a short breath that was wet and labored. "Ribs. L-lung punctured. Jim—" He cut off in a gasp of pain.

Jim hurriedly opened his communicator, but then the Caretaker spoke again.

"Do not worry, Captain. We will take them both below the surface to be repaired. Certainly Doctor McCoy's treatment will be much quicker and less painful if _we_ see to it."

Bones was coughing up blood by now, face twisted in a grimace, and Jim nearly couldn't breathe himself. He was trying to hold his friend's head and the communicator at the same time, and finally he left the communicator on his waistband and caught the doctor's hand.

"You'll take them now?" Jim asked urgently.

Then instead of an answer, he was alone.


	10. Chapter 10

This, sadly, is the end of this story. However, I am now addicted to writing our favorite trio, so I will most definitely be back. I can't promise when, thanks to school (Grr. Arg.) but I will be. I am already working on another TOS story that's here, if you haven't checked it out yet. It's slash, yeah, but anyway...I could definitely use your wonderful support on that one if you don't mind that stuff. There's nothing graphic; I'm a show-all-the-cuteness but then fade-to-black kinda girl. :P

Anyway, thanks so much for reading and reviewing my first TOS story! I hope you all like the ending. :) Happy Sunday.

Chapter 10

Jim's communicator beeped not long after the Caretaker disappeared with his friends, and it was Scotty asking worriedly what had happened to Spock and McCoy. The _Enterprise_'s scanners weren't reading them on the surface with him anymore.

"It's all right, Scotty. We got the help we were hoping for, I think. The Caretaker took them."

"_Both of them, sir_?"

The captain made a face. "The probes took over again before he showed…Doctor McCoy was injured."

He really didn't know what to do with himself. He wasn't going to leave the surface, but he could gain no joy from the grass and trees and fresh air while he was worried for his friends.

He tried pacing, he tried finding a good-sized boulder and sitting, and because he couldn't make up his mind he alternated. Sometimes he paced in front of the boulder and sometimes he rested on it.

Once or twice, admittedly, he kicked it, just for something else to do or some way to let off steam.

The wait seemed an eternity, but finally he spun in place while pacing and there was movement in trees.

"Hello?" Blue. He definitely saw blue. "Bones? Spock?"

He was almost afraid he was seeing things, bored out of his mind and anxious as he was, but then his first officer and chief surgeon emerged from the trees.

They were both walking, though Bones had one of Spock's arms over his shoulder. The Vulcan was even in uniform; one they must have manufactured for him below. The Caretaker was with them, at Spock's other side watching to be certain the doctor didn't need help supporting him.

"Thank god!" Jim said, hurrying to the small group. He reached out to his friends, taking an arm each. "Are you two all right? Spock? Bones?"

"I am considerably better than I was," the Vulcan admitted, and though he still held the doctor's shoulders for support he also leaned a bit into the captain's arm that held his now.

"We're all right, Jim," McCoy told him, smiling easily. "I'm as good as new, and Spock's getting there."

"The nanoprobes and any toxins have been eradicated, of course," the Caretaker filled in. "And we were able to give him enough of his strength be mobile, but I'm afraid even our knowledge could not restore all of it so immediately. However, it should now return at a rate normal for his species. A few days and he too will be just fine, Captain."

"Gonna need to gain some weight back, too," Bones added, directing his remark to Spock. "I haven't scanned you yet—I'm not sure how much—but I can tell you as tall as you are it shouldn't be this easy to support you."

"But other than that you're all right?" Jim questioned again.

Spock very nearly smiled at him. "Yes, Jim. I am all right. I am in no pain, I am not ill, and my mind is free."

"However, it may also be several days before your mental functions and controls are all back to their usual impeccable levels, Mr. Spock," the Caretaker reminded him. "Those will take a bit of time to recover as well, so please don't be hard on yourself if you come across some difficulty at first. I'm certain your friends would agree with me."

The Vulcan only nodded at that, uncomfortably, and Jim smiled again.

"Thank you," he said to the old man. "What you've done for us means more to me than you can know."

"Think nothing of it, Captain; I am merely apologetic that I was unable to intercede before I did."

"It's all right…as you pointed out, we know what it's like to be bound by certain rules and ideals…the Federation, Starfleet, and it's standards and mandates…I think we're really not so different."

The Caretaker smiled. "No, Captain, I suppose we are not, but flattery will not help you; we still believe your species a bit too young to know our secrets. It isn't an insult, but it stands just the same."

Jim nodded slowly. "I understand."

The old man nodded in satisfaction and stepped away from the three of them. "I must be going," he said. "If your crew wishes to enjoy themselves here once more you are still welcome, of course. Feel free to stay a while; I'm certain you all need the rest by now. You've been through quite a lot. Oh! I nearly forgot. If you'll turn your quaint scanners in ah…yes, that direction," the Caretaker said, pointing off behind them. "You may find something of interest to Mr. Spock."

They all glanced in the direction the old man pointed, and when they looked back he was gone.

"Some things never change," Jim mussed.

"Where _is_ my tricorder?" Bones asked then.

"Oh, it uhm…over there, where we were I think."

"I'll get it. Take Spock and find him somewhere to sit down."

"I assure you, Doctor, I am quite all right—"

"Save it, Spock," Jim grinned as McCoy shifted the Vulcan's weight to him. "After you nearly dying on us more than once in the last couple of weeks it may be a while before his protectiveness rating goes down. You're probably just going to have to deal with it, and I can't say I blame him."

Spock cocked an eyebrow in a such a way that Jim knew then his first officer was going to be just fine.

The doctor snorted at them both and moved off to fetch his tricorder. Jim watched him go for a moment, just to be sure he really did seem all right. He did. He walked normally, with no hint of any pain or anything wrong, and the captain finally allowed himself to relax. He helped Spock to boulder he'd been using before, and it was large enough for both of them to sit so they did.

"Should we not return to the ship?" Spock asked.

Jim shrugged. "We're badly in need of shore leave anyway, and we're already here; why not stay for a while? I'll have to beam up long enough to contact command and put everything through proper channels, but it shouldn't take long."

McCoy was back about then. "You might as well stay down here, Spock. Even if you go back to the ship I'm not letting you on duty for a few days, at least."

Seeing as he was only somewhat mobile, Spock couldn't protest that. But he did frown in a close approximation to aggravation, and Jim couldn't help but smile again.

They were all right. Both of them. They really were. It was really over.

"Jim? Are _you_ all right?" Bones asked.

He was smiling, but the doctor must have seen the rest of it.

"I'm fine Bones." He made a face. "It's just for a minute there it looked like I might lose both of you."

But he didn't want to think about that anymore. He pulled his communicator out once. "Kirk to _Enterprise_."

"_Scott here, Captain. We're readin' the doctor and Mr. Spock at your location again, sir. I trust everything turned out_?"

"It did, Scotty. We're all right down here. Have Lieutenant Uhura go ahead and patch us through to command and get to work on putting in a shore leave request, by the way."

"_AYE, sir_," the engineer answered happily.

When Jim put his communicator away Bones had his tricorder out and he was blinking at it. "Hmm…I think…Spock, tell me if this is what I think it is." He gestured vaguely in the distance the way the Caretaker had told them they might wish to look. "About forty kilometers that way."

The Vulcan took the offered tricorder, and his eyebrows went up when he looked over the reading. "If you 'think' that you are reading several square kilometers of Vulcan normal conditions in that direction, then it is," Spock said, almost incredulous.

The doctor grinned. "Well I'll be damned. They must have felt badly they didn't have anything to interest you last time we were here."

"Huh," Jim agreed. "Spock? You want to check it out? We can always beam there."

"I seem to have nothing else to occupy my time for the next several days, if the doctor is to keep me from duty; therefore, I have little reason to refuse."

McCoy rolled his eyes and Jim laughed. It meant he was pulling his communicator right back out, but he didn't mind. Especially not right now.

* * *

When they materialized the first thing Spock noticed was the warmth—the temperature of home. He felt more comfortable, physically, almost immediately.

"I've only been on Vulcan once and I didn't really notice the scenery much, for obvious reasons," Jim said. "So I wouldn't know. But this sure feels like Vulcan."

"It is…a nearly perfect imitation," Spock agreed. The sands and rocks and mountains…it all seemed like home, and it seemed to stretch as far as they could see in the direction they were looking. Yet if they turned around, they would see the sands end and the grass and trees begin only several hundred yards behind them. "Fascinating."

"What's that?" McCoy pointed.

Spock followed the doctor's gaze, and as he looked that way he recognized the rock formations before he saw what McCoy pointed to.

"Spock? What is it?" Jim asked. "Is that—?"

"It is a remarkably detailed copy of my parents' home on Vulcan, though without the city it sits on the outskirts of."

"That's your house." Jim clarified.

"A copy of it, as I said, yes."

"House?" McCoy scoffed. "That's a damned mansion."

"My father's family _is_ of a rather prominent Vulcan clan."

"Great," the doctor grumbled. "Not only is he a Vulcan, he's rich…"

"That is hardly an appropriate term in this century, Doctor."

Jim was chuckling again. Spock had to admit it was a comforting sound to hear, and that he was pleased to be arguing with McCoy again at all. Mere hours ago, with what consciousness he'd had, he had believed it likely he would never have the opportunity to experience either of those things again.

And now, here, a close approximation of the home that he had not returned to in several years. The slight pang in his chest now told him that he had missed it…and also that the Caretaker had been correct to warn him that his mental controls and defenses were not yet fully recovered.

They moved up the slope toward the house, and as they went it became easier for Spock. His strength was indeed returning. Still, he was not so foolish as to not continue to accept the support Jim and McCoy offered him. It was true, too, that he was no longer shamed by the need of it. As Jim had tried to tell him so many times, they were more than willing to give it.

He hoped, at the least, that he could remember that lesson in the future.

They did release him once they were inside, to look around, just as curious now as he was. He wondered how much the planet's scanners had taken from his mind—how detailed the representation was on the inside. Even a mere cursory glanced seemed to indicate that it was every bit as detailed as the exterior; down to the plants his mother often kept inside and titles of the books on the shelves.

That was when Jim and the doctor became hesitant, suddenly, and moved back to him.

"Well if this is your house, for all practical purposes…" the captain was saying.

"We shouldn't be prying," McCoy finished for him.

"We can go," Jim offered gently.

"You are welcome to stay. As the doctor has noted, there is enough room."

"You do want to stay here, then? While we're here?"

He found that it did not seem a disagreeable prospect. It would be strange without his parents, but then again it would also be easier. No matter how much he respected his father, the situation between himself and Sarek was still strained.

Spock nodded once. "It would…seem logical not to allow the work of bringing this fabrication into being to go to waste. The doctor has prescribed rest, and I suppose that can be accomplished as well here as in my quarters aboard the _Enterprise_."

"Good," Jim smiled. "Maybe down here you'll _really_ rest. Who knows; if I can't find anything else to do I may be back." The way he said it Spock knew he would be back in any case. "Bones?"

"Go talk to command; I'll just stay," the doctor shrugged. "I should keep an eye on my patient, anyhow." He'd already wandered over to a bookshelf. "Is there anything in English?"

"You are perusing on the wrong side of the room, Doctor. My mother, as a general rule, keeps her books on the opposite side. Those are in Standard. And that, of course, is only the selection kept in the main room. There is also a library."

"Oh, really? What'd I say, Jim? He's rich. Pointed-eared bastard; no wonder he's so smug."

The captain shook his head. "All right, you two. Don't kill each other while I'm gone."

"No need; we already tried that today," McCoy called. "It didn't work."

Spock very nearly winced to hear the incident made light of—the probes, using his body, really had nearly killed the doctor, after all—but he had learned by now that joking was McCoy's way of coming to terms with things. It was not meant to be offensive.

Jim beamed back to the ship then, leaving Spock and the doctor alone. Spock had to sit, too tired to stand anymore, and he found a chair in the seating area near where McCoy was examining the bookshelves. After a while the doctor chose a book and found a seat himself. He settled in, and seemed content.

"You know, besides the heat this place is nice," he said.

"If the atmospheric controls have been constructed correctly I could lower the temperature."

"If you want. Not too much if you do; it's probably better for your recovery to be in an environment you're more used to anyway, both physically and…well, I almost said emotionally."

Spock sat forward, hands clasped and arms resting on his knees, and his eyebrows went up. "At any other time you would have been incorrect to. However…that is not the case in this instance."

McCoy closed the book and studied him more closely. "The Caretaker meant it, then? You're still having trouble with your controls?"

"Not…trouble, per se, but they remain weak," he admitted. "They are also recovering, but it will take time."

"I'm sorry," McCoy sighed. "I know how much you don't like that; you probably wanted everything back to normal right off, didn't you?"

"What I wish is irrelevant. What is, is, and in light of the fact that I am, in fact, alive, I cannot presume to be dissatisfied."

The doctor released a snort of laughter and shook his head. "Well you sure as hell _sound_ like your old self already."

"Why thank you, Doctor."

* * *

Jim took care of business as quickly as he could and beamed back down with the good news.

"We've been given nearly a week," he announced happily. "Shore leave parties are organizing and beaming down at the main beam-in site as we speak. I'm sorry, Spock; after the last few weeks I wanted to get you home for shore leave, but…well, it looks like I came pretty close," the captain pointed out in amusement.

"Indeed."

"So there wasn't any trouble while I was gone, I take it."

"Not in the slightest," McCoy cut in. "Two hours and all he's done is sit there; maybe he picked up a book once. Apparently he's every bit as boring at home as he is on the _Enterprise_. Should have known, I guess."

Spock raised an eyebrow. Perhaps he would have formulated a retort, but instead he stood. It took Jim a moment to hear the shuffling coming from the direction of the main corridor, but then Spock would have heard it before they did.

McCoy was frowning. "What is that?"

Spock did not seemed concerned. He seemed more curious than anything, and moved away from the seating area and toward the noises.

That was when a brown shaggy-furred animal that was probably the size of the three of them put together ambled into the main room. It had fangs. That could not be good.

"Spock!" Not only was he the closest to it, but he would move the slowest of them right now. How had that thing even gotten in here?

But Spock still was not concerned. He did not seemed alarmed. He'd paused when the animal showed itself, but now he walked right up to it. "I-Chaya," the Vulcan said in wonder.

"What?" Jim asked.

"Spock, are you crazy!" McCoy called. "Get away from that thing!"

"There is no cause for alarm, Doctor. This animal is quite tame. It is a representation of a pet I had as a child."

"A _pet_?" Bones echoed.

Jim was equally confused. The thing was huge, and it looked like a shaggy-haired cross between a bear and something in the large cat family. And of course there were the six-inch fangs.

"Yes," Spock confirmed. He was stroking the animal's fur or hair or whatever at its neck, and the thing seemed to like it. "A sehlat. A common pet among Vulcan children, in fact." And then he was all but ignoring them.

Bones hung back, but Jim moved closer and heard Spock talking to the animal. "You are not precisely real, and yet it is pleasing to see you again, old friend," the Vulcan said quietly. When he shifted on his feet and stumbled, his weakness getting to him, the sehlat bent down instinctively to catch him and nudge him back up. Jim smiled at that.

"I can see it was a good idea to stay here," Jim said.

Spock glanced back at him, and maybe it was only the residual weakening of emotional control, but the Vulcan looked as close to happy as he ever did—meaning no telling expression, really, but they knew the feeling was there anyway. "Yes," he agreed.

Jim exchanged a knowing glance with Bones, who was smiling now too.

* * *

Sometime that night Jim woke with a start. Flashes of awful memories not his own echoing in in his mind reminded him of the one part of all this he'd nearly forgotten.

"Spock…" he muttered quietly.

He climbed out of the bed in the guest room he was sleeping in. He thought about waking Bones across the hall, but instead he padded down the wide second-floor corridor alone. It took him a moment to remember exactly where he was and to remember where Spock's room was, but he found it eventually.

"Spock?" He knocked. "Spock, are you all right?" There was no audible answer, but the door slid open to admit him.

The bed was empty, but the door to the balcony was open. Jim followed the moonlight, which reminded him immediately that this was not, exactly, Vulcan. He'd never been on Vulcan at night, but he did seem to recall that his first officer's home planet had no moon.

He found Spock at the balcony railing, and the large brown sehlat was half asleep at his feet. Spock was no longer in his uniform, but a dark Vulcan-style robe that must have been here in his room for him.

With his hearing Spock would be aware of his presence already, so Jim didn't bother to announce himself. He came to the railing beside his friend and looked up at the stars. "They're not the same, are they?"

"No…Vulcan has no moon, either."

"I thought so." Jim hoisted himself up on the wide stone railing and sat there, able to face Spock now. Still, he couldn't help looking up again for a while. "They're nice stars though…sometimes I forget. We spend all our time among them and sometimes I forget what it's like to just look at them. It's so clear here, too. Is the sky this clear on Vulcan?"

"With no moon and much less moisture, it is far clearer."

"Hmm…" Jim was quiet a moment. "Did you come out here often when you were young? I spent so much time looking up at the stars when I was a boy…did you?"

Spock raised an eyebrow and looked at him a moment, before he looked out and up again with an expression that was almost wistful. "I…suppose that I did," he admitted. "I was often here…I watched them, and…I wondered if there was anywhere among them that a child of two worlds truly belonged."

Now Jim had no doubt that his first officer still had a little ways to go before he was entirely himself again; he was freely discussing his childhood. Not that it was a bad thing. "Well I don't know about you, but _I_ think you've found it. I think you belong right where you are—on the _Enterprise_, with us."

The Vulcan gave him that almost-smile. He didn't say anything in particular, but it seemed to indicate he agreed.

It led to comfortable silence for a while, and Jim really did enjoy just sitting there, watching the stars. When was the last time he'd done that? And Spock was there, and somehow that just made it better.

"How are you doing?" Jim asked finally. "I know you were dreaming…I know it wasn't exactly pretty, too." Spock blinked and looked at him skeptically. The captain let out a breath. "I probably should have said something before, but it never seemed to be the right time. Everything went from bad to worse…anyway. What I'm saying is, ever since you tried to meld with me in sickbay…whatever you were doing…it left something behind. Some kind of mild connection. It seems to be fading on it's own, but I've been somewhat…aware, I guess, of…well, your…feelings," he explained, gesturing helplessly.

Now both of the Vulcan's eyebrows went up in surprise. "I see. I must apologize, Jim. I was aware it was possible for such a thing to happen—for there to be such residual effects of a meld, especially when the two parties are close in friendship or have family ties—but it did not occur to me that it could happen as a result of a failed meld."

"It's all right. It hasn't been any trouble. I just thought you should know._ I'm_ sorry, in fact; not that I could have done anything about it, but it probably makes you uncomfortable."

Spock didn't exactly answer. Jim almost reached for his folded hands resting on the railing, but remembered that things were different now. Maybe the Vulcan wasn't quite there yet, but he was becoming himself again and might not want to the contact. He reached for his friend's shoulder instead, because it was covered and shouldn't affect the Vulcan's touch telepathy.

"Spock…I know none of this has been easy for you. And I know eventually you'll put at least most of those walls back up, and I guess that's all right; it's you. We're not going to hold it against you. But while you're listening to me I want you to know that I'm here. _We're_ here. If you need us. We always will be. Even someday when we're not together on the _Enterprise_ anymore…just don't forget that. It's not going to change."

Because he _was_ beginning to assert his control once more Jim was surprise when Spock reached up briefly to cover the hand on his shoulder with his own. "I understand. Thank you, Jim," he said quietly.

Jim smiled and nodded, and for a long time after that captain and first officer stayed silently on the balcony, watching the stars.

* * *

Despite being awake for much of the night Spock rose early. He found the doctor in the kitchen, but it seemed Jim was still sleeping.

McCoy, meanwhile, seemed to have made himself at home, as the human saying went. That was perfectly fine, of course; Spock had invited them to, and this was not entirely his home anyhow as it was only a reproduction.

"Thank god they got the replicators right," McCoy commented, nodding to his heaping plate of typical human breakfast food. "The pantry's full, but I don't know how I feel about Vulcan cuisine."

Spock replicated himself a much simpler breakfast and took a seat opposite the doctor. "You will never know if you do not try it."

"Maybe later."

Spock spoke up again when the two of them were finished eating. "Doctor…I must inquire something."

McCoy stood to take both of their dishes back to the replicator, but he came back and sat again. "Shoot," he shrugged.

That colloquialism Spock understood. He had heard it before, and he knew to go on. "Before the Caretaker arrived…I was controlled by the nanoprobes once more. They would have killed you."

"That's not a question, Spock."

"No…" The Vulcan folded his hands on the table and stared at them a moment. "My question is concerning your attitude at the time."

"My what?"

It was not a comfortable subject, realizing what the doctor had done then. "The captain could have saved your life easily, by vaporizing me and the probes with me. He meant to. He would have done the 'right thing' as you put it. However, when the time came you asked him not to. The words you used seemed to indicate that you did not wish for Jim to kill me even if it meant your life would be forfeit."

McCoy shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Come on, Spock; don't make a big deal out of it. I owed you one. That's all."

"You were willing to give your life for even an uncertain chance that mine might be saved. Knowing your emotional nature, Doctor, you would not have made that decision based solely on logic, or duty. And truly it was not a logical decision at all. I…merely wish to understand your reasoning."

The doctor huffed quietly, made a face, but finally he relaxed and seemed resigned to explaining himself.

"Well, Spock…I've got a good ten years on you, _and_ you're half Vulcan. Vulcans live a lot longer than humans. So either way you've got a lot more ahead of you than I do. That much is logical, isn't it? Anyway, I guess the thought process started there. Granted, it wasn't a long one; can't really think much while being knocked around and strangled." Spock frowned, and McCoy winced. "Sorry."

He paused, collecting his thoughts.

"You've got a lot to learn, Spock," the doctor said then. "You've started to. You're getting there, but you've got a long way to go." McCoy offered him a smile and a small shrug. "Maybe I just thought you deserved that chance."

Spock did not know how to respond to that, but there was strange warm feeling in his chest…the same one he'd felt last night when he'd spoken with Jim.

The doctor stood as if to leave the kitchen, but that was when Jim hurried into the kitchen.

"Cards!" the captain said, holding up a packaged deck. "I didn't think to bring any, but these were on my nightstand when I woke up. Not just cards. Yesterday I was thinking we needed more to do if we're going to be here for five days, and now there's a whole damned stack of things. Spock, buckle up. No chess or books today; you're getting a crash course in classic Earth board games."

The Vulcan raised an eyebrow, but he didn't protest.

Spock looked at his closest friends, both of them grinning now, and thought that it sounded like a pleasing prospect, really.


End file.
